


Beyond the Storm

by kaeda



Series: Beyond the Storm [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication Failure, Future Fic, Idiots in Love, Kissing in Dangerous Situations, M/M, Mixed Signals, Redemption, Romance, Skywalkers Being Dramatic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6151048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeda/pseuds/kaeda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the defeat of the First Order, a mostly-redeemed Jedi runs into a grouchy fugitive war criminal on a planet far from Republic space. Together, they fight <strike>crime</strike> the dark side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has already been completely written and edited. A chapter will be posted every few days, but this is not a WIP and won’t be abandoned, I promise.
> 
> This story somehow turned into an homage to the old Extended Universe, particularly the novels by Timothy Zahn. Despite that, you don’t need to have read any of those books in order to understand this. It also deals with issues such as the consequences of atrocities and if one can ever be redeemed after committing horrible crimes, and there is some violence in the form of flashbacks and some threats made by characters; most of it is pretty canon-typical.
> 
> I have a background in conflict management and atrocities prevention; I don’t know if that excuses me or damns me for writing this pairing.
> 
> Special thanks to [girlwithabubblegun](http://archiveofourown.org/users/girlwithabubblegun/pseuds/girlwithabubblegun) for being my sounding board and beta! Without her, this fic would probably have joined all the others that I have sitting on my hard drive, never to see the light of day.

Luke looked how he always did, stressed and gray, like he was about to flee back to his solitude at a moment’s notice.

“There’s more stirring from the dark side,” Luke said without greeting. He and Ben had come to their peace, but it was a strained, unhappy sort of peace, the kind only family can maintain. “I have an assignment for you.”

“I hate these assignments,” Ben told him bluntly. “You’re always sending me into danger, tempting me back to the dark side.” Luke regarded him for a moment without answering, and Ben finally rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’ll take it. What do you want me to do?”

Sometimes Ben Solo missed being Kylo Ren, when people actually respected and feared him. Everyone at the Jedi temple mostly gave him a wide berth, other than Rey. The one thing nobody had ever told Ben about “redemption” was that it would end up being so lonely.

“There’s a planet out towards the Rim that’s not part of the Republic. It’s mostly unpopulated, and the few that do live there tend to be criminals and smugglers. Unfortunately, this makes this planet an ideal place for nefarious activities.” Luke frowned thoughtfully. “I had hoped the dark side would be quieter, but this is the strongest stirring I’ve felt yet since Snoke’s death.”

Ben had the urge to reply with something flippant but restrained himself.

“There’s a small ship in the hanger bay that Leia has sent for you.” A fleeting emotion from Luke – annoyance that his mother spoiled him still, even though it was hard for her to be in the same room as him. “We need to deal with this darkness before it turns into a problem.”

“Could be Sith,” Ben mused. “I’ve never met a Sith. It could be interesting. Maybe I can join them next.”

Luke continued to look unamused, which only made the situation better in Ben’s opinion.

“Ben,” he said seriously. “When you go to Myrkr, there’s something you must know. There are creatures that inhabit that planet that can block the Force. You will not be able to rely solely on your abilities to complete this mission.”

Ben, who had been essentially apathetic about the entire business, was suddenly apprehensive. “Then why pick me?” he challenged. “I use the Force extensively.” He frowned. “A planet with limited Force sensitivity does not sound like it plays to my strengths.”

“I know,” Luke said, smiling for the first time since their conversation began.

Ben’s hands shook with sudden temper, but one of the more valuable traits he’d learned since leaving Snoke was how to internalize his fury. “You’re trying to get me _killed_ ,” he accused. “You’ve been trying to find an excuse to get rid of me for _years_ but I’ve been too talented for you to pull it off—“ 

“ _Ben Solo.”_ Luke very rarely raised his voice, and so when he did, everyone froze. It echoed through the high-ceiled chamber of the Jedi temple on Chandrila, and Ben felt a hot flood of shame join his anger, his cheeks heating as several of the other students turned to look at them. “Being a Jedi is about facing your weaknesses, not just playing to your strengths. I’m not trying to get you killed. I think your reliance on the Force needs to be…tested.” Luke held himself open to the Force. “Read me yourself. You will find it to be true.”

Ben rolled his eyes. His uncle was always so dramatic, but he was also radiating earnestness. He genuinely wanted Ben to face himself with limited Force abilities to become stronger. Who purposefully put themselves in an uncomfortable or dangerous situation just for the sake of self-improvement?

“Okay,” Ben said at last. “I’ll go to Myrkr and hunt out the source of the darkness you sense.” He _had_ become notorious as the best Jedi at locating dark side users, after all. On a planet with limited Force availability, would any other Jedi even have a chance of finding the source of Luke’s worry?

“Good,” Luke said, turning away, and Ben was dismissed. He slunk out of the temple and ran straight into Rey, who was carefully balancing round stones on top of each other and keeping them standing using only the Force. She had also been clearly waiting for him and blatantly eavesdropping, both very common.

“Luke’s sending you to Myrkr, I hear,” she said, still staring right at her rock pile and not breaking concentration. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Are you really trying to have a conversation about feelings while you commune with rocks?” Ben was disgusted. Even his only ally didn’t care about how he felt most of the time. 

Rey sighed and her concentration snapped, the rocks falling to roll on the pavement below. She turned and looked straight at him, giving him her full attention. “I was multitasking. Myrkr has some weird animal that blocks the Force; that’s going to drive you nuts. Are you going to be okay?”

“Luke wants me to be ‘tested’,” Ben said, putting the last bit in air quotes. “So I’ll probably end up dead on some godforsaken world cut off from the Force, and not a single creature will care that I’m gone from existence.”

“Except me,” Rey told him. “For some reason.”

Somehow, this cheered him slightly.

“I’ll come fetch your body,” she added. “To make sure you’re buried somewhere at full Force strength.”

“You’re too kind.” Ben stared at the setting sun in the distance and sighed. He had little else to do and probably could leave that evening. Getting this ridiculous assignment started earlier would mean an earlier end to it as well, although hopefully with a successful return to the temple on Chandrila and not with his grisly death.

He left Rey with her stones and headed for his rooms, already mentally preparing for a journey.

* * *

Ben brought the following to Myrkr: a week’s worth of all black clothing, his lightsaber, two blasters with extra power packs, a vibroblade that could be stored in his boot, a black version of the standard Jedi robes, personal communication equipment, a set of sensors, and a holo of his grandfather as a young man from Luke. Thankfully, Jedi traveled lightly, and although he liked to pretend his preference for all black was because it was useful and allowed him to blend in anywhere, in reality it was just because Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were actually just different aspects of the exact same person.

The small ship that his mother had provided was comfortable and fast and got him to Myrkr within three days. The moment he was in orbit, he could feel exactly what Luke had been talking about. It was like the planet was _muted_ somehow, still existing in the Force but in small patches here and there rather than as a whole. The planet’s capital was a small frontier city called Hyllyard City, and he quickly secured a berth for his ship at the spaceport. There didn’t seem to be much bureaucracy involved, which was a relief after some of the planets he’d visited in the past.

As his ship came in for a landing, he observed the planet through the main viewport. The sensors on the ship were having difficulty picking up readings – his mother clearly hadn’t purchased as quality a ship as he’d first thought – but to the naked eye, the continent that Hyllyard City occupied seemed to be mostly forested with few obvious signs of settlement. The city itself was a small blip in the distance that coalesced into a squat collection of sand-brown buildings, most not higher than one or two stories. Myrkr was quite the backwater. 

He brought the ship in for a landing at the designated berth and settled himself in the galley with some tea. He reached out with the Force once more, but his ability to sense anything was patchy at best. He had no idea how his uncle had even gotten a sense of something dark happening on such a planet, especially when he couldn’t figure out how anyone could use any side of the Force with such an effect. He wondered again if this was some kind of trap to get him killed.

He could vaguely sense the city, however, and he quickly scanned all of the sentient beings in the area. One was glowing very brightly, not through Force-use, but because… 

Ben dropped the mug he was holding, tea splashing all over the galley. He knew that presence, although he hadn’t felt it in five years. It was a presence that he’d thought was gone forever, its owner dead. It was General Hux.

Not a general any longer, of course, not with the First Order destroyed. The bounty on Hux’s head was incredibly high, even though he had been missing and presumed dead. He was responsible for the destruction of an entire system, after all, billions of lives – of course the Republic wanted his head on a stick.

But Hux must have taken all that brilliant brain power of his and eluded capture for five long years. Ben had, several times, reached out using the Force to try to locate him, but he’d never managed to find him, and this had led him to presume that Hux had been killed.

Could it have been that Hux had been hiding on this godforsaken world without the Force for five entire years?

Ben forgot entirely about his uncle’s assignment. He quickly cleaned up his tea, threw on his black cloak, clipped his lightsaber and a blaster to his belt, and burst from the ship like he was possessed. He could vaguely sense Hux’s proximity, enough to know that he was relatively close by, but the presence was faint thanks to the weird effects of the planet.

Hyllyard City was populated with smugglers, wanderers, criminals, and former Imperials, all using the backwater location and anonymity to hide away. The streets were full of all manner of scoundrels, and Ben pulled his hood more firmly over his thick hair as he stalked through them. Insulated from the Force, he felt oddly vulnerable, and he touched his lightsaber at his side to comfort himself that it was still present.

The bright impression of Hux came and went from Ben’s senses, difficult to pinpoint with his fluctuating connection to the Force. He followed it through a town square, past an open-air marketplace, down a street lined with cantinas and sketchy warehouses, and through an alley until he reached a non-descript building, constructed from the same sand-brown stone that made up the rest of the city. There was a thumbprint scanner for entry, which Ben glared at briefly. Even if he’d had a consistent way to use the Force, it wasn’t like he could tell it to let him in, as manipulating machines was not one of his skills.

He set up camp outside the entrance until someone else scanned their own thumbprint. He slipped in behind an older woman with a mean pistol strapped to her hip, attempting to use his Force ability to try to convince the woman she hadn’t seen him. She didn’t react, so it apparently worked – either that, or suspicious strangers were so common there that nobody batted an eyelash.

Once inside and standing in a central atrium, he reached out with his senses again, trying to locate Hux in the building itself. The courtyard where he stood was open to the sky, and bright sunlight shined onto the succulents growing below. Each floor had a balcony which ran along the interior in a square, lined with doors, presumably to apartments or rooms. Unfortunately, the Forceless effect of the city was strong, and Ben couldn’t locate Hux more specifically than in the building itself. He found the entire planet infuriating.

A door slid open on one of the upper floors and a man exited, walking along the balcony to a turbolift. The atrium contained several benches amongst its landscaping, and Ben quickly pulled the cloak over his head more firmly and seated himself on one, trying to look casual and inconspicuous. A moment later, the lift opened into the courtyard and a dark-haired man exited.

Ben glanced at him briefly and did a double take, recognizing the pale skin and the contemptuous look on his face. It was Hux.

He stood quickly, putting himself in Hux’s path, but words escaped him and he only stared at him. Hux drew back in concern, his hand flying to the blaster on his hip, before he clearly recognized the face beneath the cloak and stopped. “… _Ren_?!”

Ben hastily threw back his hood so that Hux could see him, still marveling over how different he looked with his hair dyed an inconspicuous dark brown. “I go by Ben now,” he corrected, because he didn’t know what else to say. He was starting to feel warm all over, and something like fondness welled up in his chest, shocking him.

Hux rolled his eyes visibly, reminding Ben why he wasn’t actually fond of him at all. “So with Snoke’s death, I see your adolescent adventuring with evil came to an end? Ben Solo returns to the warm cradle of his remaining family, and the First Order never happened?” he sneered.

“For a man with such a large price on his head, you’re being awfully unpleasant to someone who could turn you in to the authorities,” Ben replied snottily.

“It’s been fun, Ren,” Hux replied, completely ignoring his empty threat. “A real party. Say hi to your mother for me.” He made as though he was going to brush by Ben and continue on his way, and Ben realized that the moment Hux was gone, there was no way he’d ever return here, not if he’d gotten as good at running as his lack of capture suggested. He quickly grabbed Hux by the wrist and spun him back around, getting into his personal space and staring right into his green eyes.

Hux’s eyes widened, staring back at him, but he still didn’t seem to be frightened. Having Hux so close made Ben feel uncomfortable, like his skin didn’t fit right, but he ignored it in favor of glaring intimidatingly down at Hux and using his few inches of extra height to his advantage.

“I thought you were dead,” he said intensely.

“I sometimes wish I was,” Hux replied. “I’m sorry to disappoint you though, I’m actually very much alive. And planning on staying that way.”

“I’m not going to turn you in.” Ben let go of Hux’s wrist and stepped away, surprised at how reluctant he was to widen the space between them. Hux continued to watch him warily, shaking his wrist out slightly as though Ben had actually gripped it with force.

“What are you doing here, Ren?” Hux asked wearily. “Come to haunt my waking life as well as my nightmares?”

“You dream about me?” Ben queried before he could help himself.

“It was _metaphorical_ ,” Hux snapped, but a faint bit of red was rising in his cheeks as Ben watched him. He sighed and glanced around the courtyard. “Come up to my apartment before we attract unwanted attention. My errands can wait.” Without waiting for Ben to agree, he turned on his heel and returned to the lift. Ben followed silently and scrutinized Hux from the corner of his eye as they waited for the turbolift to take them back up to Hux’s floor.

Hux’s apartment was small. It was barely furnished, and nothing personal was visible, leading Ben to believe that Hux was ready to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. “How long have you been here?” he asked, seating himself in a too-small, rickety chair next to a lopsided dining table.

Hux glanced at him suspiciously, but he apparently decided there wasn’t much Ben could do with the information. “I’ve been on Myrkr for about three and a half years. I spent some time in a city on the southern continent, established myself as a mercenary for hire, and I was doing some good business for awhile. Then, about three months ago, the town went strange, and I didn’t want to risk it, so I moved up here.”

“Strange?” Ben asked. “How does a town go ‘strange’?”

Hux crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you here, Ren?” he asked again. “You clearly were looking for me.”

“Not until I landed.” Ben felt oddly defensive about this point. “I didn’t even know you were here until I scanned the city and felt your presence.”

For the first time, Hux looked a little frightened. “You could sense me here? Even with the ysalamiri?”

“The what?”

Hux gave a gusty sigh and moved into the small kitchen, heating up some water on the stove. Ben noted that he was still as grouchy as ever. “Ysalamiri. They’re small tree-dwelling lizards that repel the Force. Did you really come here without knowing about them?”

“I didn’t know what they were called,” Ben snapped. “I’m not an idiot, I knew the Force worked differently on this planet.”

“You’ve always been an idiot, so don’t act insulted that I underestimated you,” Hux said.

Ben stood so abruptly that the chair fell over behind him. “I don’t even know why I’m here,” he growled angrily. “You clearly don’t want me here, and I’m sorry I wasted my precious time trying to track you down when I should have been starting my mission.” He made his way to the door in a fury.

“What’s your mission?” Hux asked, unmoved as he always had been by Ben’s show of temper. “I see the lightsaber hanging from your belt. Did they really just let you return and play Jedi again?”

Ben froze at the door. “I’m not _playing_ anything. When Snoke died, it was like the blinders came off of my eyes. I’m a Jedi now. Sorry to disappoint.”

“I thought your attitude was just a result of Snoke and the dark side,” Hux sneered. “But it turns out that even Jedi Ben Solo is childish and easily angered. Come back and sit down, Ren.” Ben turned to look at him and was startled to see that Hux had placed a kettle and two teacups on the table, pouring hot water into each cup. He produced two small pods from a small container on the table and placed one in each cup, turning the water quickly into a warm, spicy-smelling tea.

Hux made not leaving sound so reasonable, even as he insulted him. Ben sighed and righted the chair, seating himself once more. The tea in front of him was too hot to drink, but he put his hands around the cup and sniffed it, taking in the warm aroma.

“Skywalker sensed someone using the dark side here and sent me to investigate,” Ben finally admitted. Hux surveyed him for a moment before taking a sip of his own cup, clearly unbothered by the temperature.

“The dark side? Wouldn’t that be dangerous for you, temptation and all?” 

Having Hux across from him was far greater temptation than the dark side had ever been for Ben, even though he would never admit it. “I’m not actually suited to the dark side,” he said instead.

Hux raised one eyebrow at him. Kylo Ren had once had dreams about that raised eyebrow, and Ben swallowed nervously. “ _You_ aren’t suited to the dark side? Ren, please.”

“It’s true!” Ben insisted. “Snoke was always pushing me to be something I wasn’t. It made me feel like I was being…torn apart. Using the dark side took so much energy, so much effort. The light side comes much more easily to me.” He shrugged. “But because I’m so familiar with it, I can sense it far more easily than most other Jedi. So Skywalker sends me on these missions.”

Hux regarded him for a moment, as though he didn’t know what to think. “Do you at least actually have a lightsaber that works now?” he finally asked.

That was just uncalled for. “My old lightsaber was made with my grandfather’s kyber crystal! It had sentimental value!”

“It looked like it was going to explode every time you turned it on,” Hux replied. “I was half afraid it was going to destroy my ship in the inevitable blast."  
  
“Well, it was destroyed when Snoke was killed,” Ben said, determined not to think about losing yet another link to his grandfather. “So it doesn’t matter. I made this one myself when I returned to the Jedi temple.” 

They sipped their tea in silence for a long moment, studying each other. There was a strange sort of intensity between their glances, something that Ben had been missing for the last five years. The animosity was always present, but so was something…else.

“Where are you going to begin looking for this dark Jedi?” Hux asked at last.

“I usually use the Force to track them,” Ben explained. He reached out to see if he could sense anything from their current position, but the bright presence of _Hux_ outshone everything else; Ben wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the ysalamiri or just Hux himself. Hux had always made him somewhat myopic. “Unfortunately, this ridiculous planet and it’s native…wildlife…make that relatively difficult, so I suppose I’ll have to approach it from another angle.”

He hated not having the Force at his beck and call. His uncle definitely had a cruel sense of humor. He didn’t know where to start, but he wasn’t about to admit that to anyone, much less someone as dedicated to mocking him as Hux.

“Another angle like what?” Hux clearly knew that Ben had no idea and was trying to catch him out. The asshole.

Ben thought for a moment. “I could interrogate some smugglers, make them tell me if they know anything.”

Hux burst out laughing. “Are you sure you’re a Jedi?” he asked. Ben wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Hux truly laugh before, and he thought for a moment that he liked the sound, even if he wasn’t thrilled at the reason behind it.

“Reasonably sure,” he snapped.

“What are you going to ‘interrogate’ them about? If they’ve seen any Sith lurking around? Any lightsabers glinting off treetops?”

“What about strange happenings that can’t be explained? Deaths in the local ysalamiri population?” Ben countered. He may not have been the greatest Jedi ever, but he wasn’t exactly a complete failure, no matter what the trainees whispered behind his back. 

Hux’s amusement disappeared as swiftly as it had arrived. “Shit,” he said. “You don’t need to interrogate anyone. I know where to start looking.”

He allowed sufficient dramatic tension to sink in by taking that moment to go clean their now-empty teacups in the small kitchen.

“What do you mean, you know where to start looking?” Ben demanded.

“I told you, I used to live in a city on the southern continent,” Hux explained as he rinsed out the cups and set them out to dry. “You may not be aware that the first settlers on this planet were on the run from the Jedi and found the Force-blocking ability of the ysalamiri to be…advantageous. They genetically modified the one original species to ensure that types of ysalamiri could exist in every climate zone on the planet, including in the tropical zone near the equator.

“Starting about a year ago, a plague swept through the local ysalamir population near the equatorial city of Skylarville, and they began dropping dead in the thousands. It took those of us living in the city awhile to notice, but those who went out into the forest kept returning with stories of dead ysalamiri, and eventually, the city investigated and found that 80% of the local population was dead. This opened up that part of Myrkr to the Force, something that many of us, myself included, found to be alarming. 

“I decided to stay in Skylarville at the time, but a few months later, an unidentified militia took over the city with no warning. One moment, we were ruled by a hybrid smuggler’s council, as lawless as Hyllyard City, and the next, uniformed guards were roaming the streets and keeping order. That was when I decided that things had gotten too risky for my continued life there and made my escape up north.”

Ben digested this for a moment. “Those two things together do sound suspicious,” he said at last. “I guess I’d better go check out Skylarville.”

Hux frowned at him for a moment before stiffly nodding. “I guess you’d better.”

“Thank you for sharing that information,” Ben said. The words felt sour in his mouth. More than anything, he didn’t want to leave Hux again, not now that he’d just found him, but he could think of no logical reason to stay now that he had what he needed.

“It’s been a pleasure, Ren, as always,” Hux said, defaulting to sarcasm as he always did when he was uncomfortable. This close and attuned to very little Force sense, Ben wondered if Hux didn’t want him to leave either, but also wasn’t going to ask him to stay.

They seemed to be at an impasse, but what else was new? It was as though the last five years hadn’t even happened.

Ben didn’t know what else to say, so he made his way to the door and let himself out. The entire ride down to the courtyard, he could feel the distance increasing between himself and that bright presence, like someone had tied a spring between them and was slowly extending it. He clenched his fist and vowed to ignore it. If he had to leave Hux behind, he had to leave Hux behind. Jedi occasionally had to make sacrifices.

He returned to the ship and booted up the navcomputer in order to locate Skylarville. Like Hux had said, it was located on the southern continent, right in the equatorial tropics near the seashore. Ben briefly wondered if it was lovely, and tried to imagine Hux relaxing enough to enjoy a tropical beach. It didn’t seem to suit him. 

A loud noise sounded at the entrance to his ship.

Ben blinked from where he’d been spacing out, imagining Hux in a swimsuit. The noise sounded again, and this time it was clear that someone was knocking against the closed hatch. When Ben went to the entrance to find out who was looking for him, he didn’t know why he was so surprised to find Hux there, dressed in smuggler’s clothes with a backpack slung over his shoulder, but he was astonished.

“I’m coming with you,” Hux said. It was so soon after Ben had returned to the ship that Hux must have packed his bag and dashed out right after him. “You’re probably going to get yourself killed without me to watch your back, and I haven’t let that happen yet.”

Ben stared at him kind of stupidly. “Is this a good idea?” he asked.

“No,” Hux replied. “Of course it’s not. We both know it’s not.” He took one step closer, bringing himself inside the ship. “But we both also know I’m coming anyway.”

Ben couldn’t help but grin at him.


	2. Chapter 2

Landing at Hux’s equatorial city turned out to be much more complex than at Hyllyard City. As their ship came in on approach, a gruff voice demanded over the comm, “unidentified craft, please state your name and business in Skylarville”. 

Ben and Hux exchanged glances. “Don’t give them your real name,” Hux ordered.

“I’m not an idiot,” Ben snapped, ignoring the fact that he’d registered his ship in Hyllyard City under the name ‘Ben Solo’.  
  
Hux rolled his eyes and took control of the comm system. “My name is Hal Xulron, and I’m running cargo from Hyllyard City with my partner, Ren Starkiller.” His eyes caught Ben’s at the word ‘partner’ and held. Ben licked his lips and felt his face grow hot.

“Thank you, Mr. Xulron. You will be expected to provide a cargo manifest upon landing, as well as identification documents. Your ship can dock in Bay 3.” The comm cut off abruptly.

“Cargo manifest? Where are we going to get a cargo manifest?” Ben demanded. “And identification documents for _Hal Xulron_ and _Ren Starkiller_?!”

Hux’s default facial expression seemed to be exasperated annoyance. “I had to say something or they might have shot us out of the sky. And I have an identicard for Hal Xulron, so really the biggest problem is you, _Ben Solo_.” It was the first time that he’d addressed Ben by his real name since they’d reunited, and it made Ben feel as though his heart was in his throat.

“Using fake names and pretending to be someone else isn’t exactly my strong suit,” Ben told him, and didn’t realize the irony of his statement until Hux snorted loudly.

“You keep telling yourself that, Ren.”

“Regardless, we still don’t have a cargo manifest or my identity documents,” Ben continued. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll handle it,” Hux said.

“Excuse me if I don’t find that comforting.”

“I said I’ll handle it,” Hux hissed, clearly growing frustrated. “Why don’t you leave me to what I do best and concern yourself with your mystical nonsense instead?”

Frustration flared in Ben’s stomach. Just like back in the First Order, Hux didn’t trust him. Why had he ever imagined there’d been some sort of unspoken bond between the two of them, through the cutting words and poisonous looks? Because sometimes, those looks had gone on too long, turning into something else? Because sometimes, when they weren’t trying to get under each others’ skin, they formed an easy camaraderie? He was obviously misremembering out of nostalgia for his time as Kylo Ren.

Without answering Hux, Ben turned and left the cockpit, making his way angrily to the small cabin that he’d turned into his bunk, fists clenched at his side. He no longer destroyed property with his lightsaber – Luke had put a stop to that almost immediately – but he still felt like he needed an outlet for his feelings sometimes when they crept up on him. There was nothing satisfying to throw or kick in the cabin, with everything bolted down for space travel, and he found himself punching his pillow unsatisfyingly. Hux hadn’t even said anything particularly worse than normal, so why was he so upset?

“You really are the same person,” Hux observed from the doorway. “I didn’t believe that redeemed Jedi Ben Solo was really the Ren that I worked with all those years, but it’s true. Are you crying?" 

“No.” Ben hastily wiped some wetness from his eyes before he turned to look at Hux, who was leaning against the doorframe casually. The pose, which First Order General Hux would have never assumed, emphasized the five years of lost contact between them, living different lives. It was the slouch of a smuggler, of a criminal, not of a military man who lived his life by a rigid code. 

“It was almost like you were dead, knowing you’d returned to _them_ ,” Hux continued, his voice low. “Imagining you as this calm Jedi, back with your family like those years in Snoke’s service never happened. I thought you’d have a personality transplant, as if the person you were when I knew you was purely from what Snoke had done to you. It was an unbearable thought.”

Ben stared at him, surprised by this confession and how quickly it banished the unhappiness he’d felt. “You were sad at the thought that I’d changed?”

“Kylo Ren never had the temperament of a Jedi,” Hux said decisively with a roll of his eyes.

“Ben Solo doesn’t much have the temperament of a Jedi, either,” Ben confessed. “I’m not very good at it. I don’t have enough respect for authority, and I give in to my feelings too easily. Skywalker is always trying to get me to leave the temple before I upset the younger trainees.”

Hux walked into the room and sat himself at the uncomfortable little stool next to where Ben was curled up on the bed. He regarded Ben almost fondly. “I don’t know why I had so little faith that you would remain the person you always were, name changes or not.”

“Seventeen years of a person’s life can’t be erased like that,” Ben agreed. Hope was beginning to unfurl again in his stomach, and he hated how Hux sent his feelings into hyperdrive, like everything was cranked up to the highest possible setting. He was thirty-seven years old and far too old to be fluttering with a crush, no matter how few he’d had in his life.

“I have to go land the ship in our assigned landing bay before someone gets suspicious,” Hux told him regretfully. He reached out, and for a moment, Ben thought that he was going to touch his face. Fierce yearning shot through him, hardly tempered by the fact that Hux was just smoothing Ben’s hair, which had become disheveled during his emotional moment. Hux stood a moment later and left for the cockpit, leaving Ben staring after him.

* * *

In the end, what Ben hadn’t counted on was that the Force in Skylarville was stronger than ever. 

Hux presented his identicard to a pair of uniformed guards waiting for them in the docking bay, one hand resting on the butt of his blaster, looking like a genuine smuggler. However, Ben simply used a Jedi mind trick to convince them that they’d seen his own identicard and that their cargo manifest was not suspicious.

“It’s so nice to be able to be myself again,” he said after he and Hux had locked up the ship and headed out into the city. Hux looked unimpressed.

“I could have handled it,” he said.

“My way was less risky,” Ben insisted.

“Until someone double checks on our ship and sees that we don’t have the necessary data.” Hux had never appreciated the Force. It was one of his many shortcomings. “Or does your magic also create documentation?”

“You’re being paranoid,” Ben said, dismissing any further concern about the issue. “What’s our next step?”

“It’s getting late, so unless you want to sleep on the ship, we should find a place to stay.” The time difference between Skylarville and Hyllyard City was several hours. “I still know a lot of people in this city, and I can reach out to my contacts tomorrow.”

Ben really didn’t want to sleep on the uncomfortable bunk in his ship for any longer than he had to. “I have credits,” he said. “Let’s find lodgings.”

“I know a hotel.” Hux pointed in the direction of the spaceport exit. “After you?”

The walk to the hotel was about ten minutes, and in that time, Ben learned much about Skylarville.

First, the population was scared. The fear was almost overwhelming and hung cloyingly in his mind, like a bad smell. Even if he hadn’t had the Force, it was obvious from the lack of eye contact and the speed in which residents made their way through the streets. There were very few people out and about at all, other than groups of soldiers in unidentifiable insignia patrolling the streets. Their uniforms were identical to the armed men who had taken Ben and Hux’s information at the spaceport.

Second, Skylarville was clearly occupied by some organized group. The matching insignias and uniforms and the sudden bureaucracy at the spaceport both spoke to the fact that power had changed hands very recently in this city. But to whom?

Third, the Force was very strong in Skylarville, especially compared to the rest of Myrkr, and there was indeed a dark tinge to it. Even with Hux’s presence burning brightly beside him, the darkness seeped in.

“You’ve brought us to the right place,” Ben told Hux. “This is definitely where that dark presence is coming from.”

“I’ve been smart enough to stay out of trouble for five years,” Hux replied. “Of course I know when something dangerous comes to the place where I live.”  
  
The hotel Hux eventually led them to was nondescript and relatively shabby from the outside, but the interior was slightly nicer and furnished in austere Imperial style. A man was playing sabaac on a datapad at the front desk, but he looked up when they approached and grinned broadly when he laid eyes on Hux.

“Hal!” his voice boomed through the entire lobby. “You’re back! Hyllyard City wasn’t good enough for you?”

Hux suddenly turned into a completely different person. He smiled widely in response and went around the desk to give the other man a hug. “Of course not, not when I have so many of you still here!” They both turned and looked at Ben, who felt supremely awkward. “Ren, this is my old friend, Ko Yaniga. He owns the hotel. Ko, Ren is an…old friend.”

Ko’s face grew knowing in a way that Ben didn’t particularly like. “Ah, I see. Shall I get you both a room?”

“Yes, thank you,” Hux said, because apparently ‘Hal’ was friendly and polite and outgoing and all the things that Hux himself was not. Or at least, all the things that Ben had thought Hux was not. Perhaps there had been hidden facets of Hux that Kylo Ren had never witnessed. Ben was so deep in thought about Hux’s personality transplant that he failed to notice that Hux had gotten them only one room until they took the turbolift up and stood inside it. 

Not only was there only one room, there was also only one large bed.

Hux gave a particularly strangled laugh. “Ko seems to have made some…assumptions.” While Ben had been politely keeping himself out of Hux’s mind since his sense of the Force had returned, a particularly loud thought joined that statement. _Perhaps he knows me too well._  

“It’s only for one night,” Ben said. He didn’t know how else to react to either statement. He definitely had enough credits to go back down and order another room for himself. The hotel didn’t seem particularly full, either – a quick survey through the Force found mostly empty rooms, with a few minds scattered here and there – so they could have easily switched. Neither of them mentioned either option.

Something flared brightly in Ben’s heart. It had been a long, long time since he’d had such a feeling.

Preparing for sleep, Ben kept most of his clothing on and climbed into the big bed, but to his surprise, Hux emerged from the attached bathroom shirtless and in loose sleeping pants. Ben swallowed hard and peeled his eyes away from Hux’s bare chest – being on the run had apparently kept him in excellent shape, even though he was still as outrageously skinny as Ben remembered from the First Order. Ben suddenly felt supremely awkward, his palms sweating, and he turned over in the bed and pretended to already be asleep. 

The mattress dipped as Hux slid in next to him. “Good night, Ren,” he said softly, leaning over and smoothing Ben’s hair. He must have known that Ben was still awake; Ben thought his heart was going to pound its way out of its rib cage. There was no way Hux couldn’t hear it.

He laid awake, feeling a phantom hand in his hair long after Hux’s breathing had evened out beside him.

* * *

Sometime in the night, Ben shifted and pulled Hux against him. He woke the next morning to early morning light streaming into the wide windows in their dingy hotel room and found Hux clutched to his chest, Ben’s long arms around him and Hux’s head resting on his collarbone. Hux was surprisingly cuddly for such a grouchy person, Ben thought sleepily, and buried his nose in that dark hair, gently running his fingertips along the bumps of Hux’s spine. He missed the brilliant red of Hux’s normal hair color. Ben was so comfortable and warm that it was only a few moments before he drifted back off into sleep, Hux still clutched in his arms.

When he awoke again a few hours later, his arms were empty and Hux was gone. 

Ben sat up, scanning the hotel with the Force, but there was no sign of that bright presence. He scanned further into the city and found him – Hux was three blocks over at a cantina, chatting with a group of men and women that his mind identified as ‘old friends’. There was no obvious danger, either in Hux’s mental state or in his wandering the city without Ben, but Ben dragged himself out of bed and dressed quickly anyway.

Ko Yaniga was still at the front desk, this time reading something on the datapad. He ignored Ben’s obvious hurry as he exited the turbolift to ask, “how did you sleep?”

“Fine,” Ben told him, ignoring the leer that Yaniga sent in his direction. Why did he care what this idiot thought of him? Hux wasn’t actually the kind of man to have _friends_. None of these people knew the real Brendol Hux II, not like Ben did. They thought he was a criminal named Hal Xulron, honestly. 

Stalking out of the hotel, he made his way to the cantina only to find the door blocked by an unhappy-looking woman with intimidating muscles displayed prominently from her sleeveless shirt and an even larger blaster at her side. “We’re closed,” she said shortly.

“My friend is in there,” Ben said with a scowl.

“I couldn’t care less if the Emperor himself was in there,” the woman replied, crossing her arms across her chest and standing at full height. She was taller than Phasma had been, long ago, even taller than Ben himself. “We’re closed and you’re not going in.”

“You’ll let me pass.” Ben tried to use the Force to influence her mind, but she just rolled her eyes at him, apparently too strong-minded for it to work.

“Your Jedi bullshit doesn’t work on me, Ren,” she snapped. “He’s busy. Come back later.”

“You know who I am?”

An exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Hal told us you’d probably show up.”

“He told you I’m a Jedi?” Ben asked, confused. What was Hux _doing_? 

She gave him a droll look and pointed at his belt. “You’re wearing a lightsaber. You’re not very good at this espionage thing, are you? There’s a place down the street that serves fried seafood, caught fresh from the ocean.” She gestured vaguely. “I suggest you go treat yourself to lunch there. Hal will join you when he’s free.”

Ben was unhappy about being turned away, but he didn’t particularly want to pick a fight with this woman. She seemed to be trustworthy from the little he could read off of her, despite her intimidating look, and she reminded him enough of Phasma that he didn’t really want to mess with her. He sighed and made his way to the seafood place, which was little more than a small bar with stools in an alcove off from the street. The scent of the sea was everywhere, even if he couldn’t see the ocean from there.

He sat down and ordered a meal, the frustration low in his gut beginning to work itself into anger and anxiety. He was eating some sort of delicious fried fish when Hux seated himself at the bar beside him.

“There’s definitely something going on in this city,” Hux said without preamble, shamelessly stealing a piece of Ben’s fish off his plate and popping it in his mouth.

“You left,” Ben scolded him, moving his plate out of Hux’s reach. “You didn’t even tell me where you were going, and that woman wouldn’t let me join you. What if something had happened to you? What if the person causing trouble here had come for you?”

“I’ve survived on the run from the New Republic for five years without your help, Ren. I can take care of myself.” Hux signaled to the droid manning the fish stand and ordered his own fried dish.

“This is more than just New Republic agents looking for you, Hux!” Ben snapped. “This is some sort of dark Force user.”

“You can’t get angry and scold me like a child every time you’re worried about me.” Hux was radiating anger and displeasure, but Ben could also feel beneath those emotions that he also was flattered at Ben’s display of concern. “I came along with you because I actually have something to contribute. Now, are you willing to listen to what I discovered from my network or not?”

Ben stared sullenly down into his fried fish. “Fine. What did you find?”

The droid brought Hux’s order to the bar, and he took a moment to dig in and eat a few pieces before he continued, probably just to annoy Ben. “That cantina is owned by a man who I’ve done a few favors for, Talon Karrde. He’s a retired smuggler who operated during the Rebellion, and he’s concerned about an associate of his who has gone missing. She’s Force-sensitive and went to investigate the plague that wiped out the majority of the ysalamiri in this region. She never returned. He thinks there’s a chance that the dark thing you’re sensing might have captured her.”

Ben thought this over. “So you think if we try to sense this woman, we can track her location and use it to find the source of the darkness?”

Hux raised an eyebrow. “Is there really a ‘we’ with your Jedi magic?” 

“Do you know how many Force-sensitive women there may be within a radius of this place?” Ben asked. “This could still be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“He gave me her information, if that would help,” Hux added, pulling out a handheld holoprojector and turning it on to show the profile of the missing woman. The moment the picture loaded, Ben froze.

“I know her,” he whispered. She was older than he remembered, and he hadn’t seen her since he was a child, but the red hair and the unsmiling facial expression were undeniable. “That’s Mara Jade. Rey’s mother.”

It obviously took Hux a moment to place the name. “Rey Skywalker? Your cousin?”

“Mara left before…before I was a teenager. She wasn’t suited to settling down, not like Luke wanted her to. They always kept in touch, I think, at least until…” Ben trailed off, not sure how to continue that sentence. He had no trouble talking about the atrocities he’d committed as Kylo Ren, even killing his own father, but for some reason, the crimes he’d committed when he was still Ben Solo were far harder to discuss.

“When you severed your connection with everyone you loved and ran off to join Snoke?” Hux prompted diplomatically.

Ben nodded. “And since I knew her, I should be able to find her. I know what her presence feels like through the Force.”

He was about to suggest that they find her at once when it hit him that he didn’t want this mission to be over. Once they found the source of the dark power and took care of it, there would be no further excuse to stay with Hux on Myrkr. He would have to return to his miserable life on Chandrila, and Hux would probably flee to a whole other star system, never to be seen again.

He couldn’t bear it.

He turned to Hux. “Run away with me,” he said.

Hux stared at him, startled midway through chewing a piece of fish, which he swallowed awkwardly. “Excuse me?”

“You have nothing here,” Ben said quickly. “We could just leave. We could go anywhere. I’d protect you. I’d—“

“You’re mental,” accused Hux. “You haven’t seen me in five years, Ren. You know nothing about me or what I’ve been doing with my life. You’d give up your perfect world with your family and your Jedi and your commitments to what, live on some backwater with me? Please.” He rolled his eyes. “Just find this Jade woman so we can get this over with, okay?" 

Ben felt like he’d been slapped. “My life is far from perfect,” he snapped. “But if you don’t want to go away with me, I’d hate to make you do otherwise. I’m sorry I asked.” He stood up brusquely, pushing away his own empty plate and stalking off with the holoprojector. 

Hux didn’t bother to chase him, instead choosing to remain in a dark thundercloud of a mood at the food stand, so Ben made his way back to their hotel room to meditate and attempt to locate Mara. He sat himself on the bed, trying to push away his own misery and the feeling of rejection that was churning away in his gut. It took some time to clear his thoughts, but he was eventually able to reach a meditative state.

Mara Jade had been a solid fixture in Ben Solo’s young life. She’d been prickly and occasionally prone to a temper, but she’d always been kind to Ben. He knew she had some sort of Imperial past, although nobody had talked about it, and she’d trained her own Force abilities with Luke while Ben had been a child. Somewhere in that blur of family gatherings and Snoke’s voice whispering in his ear, Rey had been born. Mara had left soon after, for reasons Ben had been too young to understand but he knew she’d sent holos to Rey every year until Ben had left her on Jakku.

He was pretty sure he was probably not Mara Jade’s favorite person in the galaxy. There was a decent chance she might even try to kill him for destroying her family and keeping her from her daughter for ten years.

He could remember what she felt like through the Force, though, so instead of worrying about the outcome of discovering her, Ben reached out through Skylarville and the surrounding jungle and tried to locate her presence. He scanned the city first, even though he thought there was little chance that she would actually be present there. Whatever was going on in the Skylarville region, Ben doubted that it was so close to the city itself.

After the city turned up no notably familiar presences other than the glowing warmth of Hux, still several blocks away and now back in Karrde’s cantina, Ben expanded his Force sense outward to the surrounding jungle. There were small patches of Forceless bubbles here and there, probably surviving ysalamiri, but the majority of the jungle was open to the Force and easy to scan.  
  
It wasn’t until he expanded his radius twice more that he found Mara.

She was about fifteen miles out from the city limits, deep in the jungle and surrounded by other people. Ben was careful not to touch her mind and alert her of his presence as he examined the area. There was a small armed force of about a hundred men guarding old ruins that had been turned into a base of some sort. Ben idly scanned through them, trying to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

He became aware that the room around him was growing colder, goose bumps forming on his arms. A chill went down his spine. He ignored the discomfort of his physical body and continued to scan. Jedi should be used to being uncomfortable - wasn’t that what Luke always said? The troops stationed at the base seemed to be primarily ground support troops, guarding something…or someone.

Abruptly, Ben had the sensation of being watched.

First, he thought Hux must have returned while his attention was elsewhere. He pulled himself out of the meditative state, but when he looked around the hotel room, it was empty. The sensation of being watched hadn’t faded. 

Another chill went down his spine when he realized he wasn’t being watched in reality, but through the Force.

He slammed up the barriers that Luke had taught him to form after Snoke had been permanently exorcised from his mind, but the feeling of being watched didn’t disappear. Whatever was causing it, it was _strong_. And dark; Ben recognized the roiling dark Force power coming off of it. Whatever it was, it had come from that base, and Ben had to get rid of it before Hux returned with his unguarded, open mind. 

He dove back into meditation, sending his mind back to the base. This time, he ignored the ground troops, seeking only the sense of darkness that had invaded his mind and the presence that was haunting him. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he found it easily, across the base from Mara Jade in some sort of central chamber.

_Hello, Jedi_ , a voice spoke in his mind, and Ben abruptly and forcefully severed the connection between them.

The room around him was blissfully silent. Nothing watched him any longer. The Force was calm around him, its usual tinge of gray. Whatever that had been, he’d successfully driven it off. For now. 

A bright presence flared on the periphery of his senses. Hux was returning.

The moment he entered their hotel room, Hux noticed that something was wrong. Instead of continuing their earlier fight, he sat next to Ben on the bed and gave him an imploring look. “Did you find her?” 

“The dark Force user knows I’m here,” Ben replied. “He found me and followed me back here through the Force. We have to leave.” He still felt kind of stunned; he hadn’t felt dark power on such a level since Snoke.

Hux, to his credit, reacted immediately. “Did you locate where it was coming from? We should bring the fight to him before he has time to react.”

“I know where he is,” Ben confirmed. “Mara Jade is in the same place. They’re in the jungle outside the city.”

“Then let’s go. We’ll go there now, surprise them, and deal with this problem before this Force user can be ready to fight back.” Hux was decisive and bloodthirsty, and Ben wondered how long it had been since he’d been in battle. Had he missed being military commander of a huge force? The lack of planning was unlike him, though – he’d always thought things through to the smallest detail in the First Order, all those wheels turning in his mind constantly. Ben wondered what had changed.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea—“ Ben started.

“Isn’t it better than waiting for them to come here and find us? You said yourself that he knows where you are.” Hux frowned. The surge of overprotectiveness that he projected almost bowled Ben over, even as it was enshrouded in denial and annoyance. 

He gave in. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go find them before they find us.” He reattached his lightsaber to his belt, stashed his vibroblade in his boot, and threw on his black cloak. “Are you coming?” 

Hux slung his backpack over one shoulder, causing Ben to briefly wonder what exactly was inside that was so necessary for an assault on a base. “I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

Ben wanted to rent speeder bikes from a droid at the edge of the city, but Hux nixed that idea. “You can hear a speeder bike coming from a mile away,” he pointed out. “We walk.”

“It’s pretty far from the city,” Ben pointed out. “More than fifteen miles. That could take all day.” Plus, he wasn’t sure if he was up for hiking that much in the sweltering heat of the distantly ominous-sounding jungle. 

Hux sighed loudly, as if to communicate to Ben that he was only giving in reluctantly. “All right. We’ll take speeder bikes most of the way and then hike the final two miles.” Ben didn’t even want to hike two miles, but it was better than fifteen. 

“Fine,” he gave in, handing his credit chit over to the droid. Being a Skywalker meant credits were never a problem, which came in handy more often than not on these types of missions. 

As they climbed onto the bikes and familiarized themselves with the controls (standard Imperial issue, a little old, but still in working condition), Ben turned to Hux and gave him what he hoped was a stern look. “I’m going to be navigating using the Force, so you’ll have to follow me. I hope you can manage it.”

Hux rolled his eyes visibly, a habit that Ben was rapidly becoming tired of. “I think I can keep up,” he said snippily.

Ben started up the bike, the subsonic vibration crawling through his skin to set his teeth on edge, and glanced over at Hux. He appeared to be ready to go.

They took off through the jungle. Ben used the Force to keep them headed towards the base, trying to be subtle enough that he didn’t alert the dark presence to the fact that they were on their way. Hux kept a safe distance behind him, but every time Ben brushed his mind with the Force, he was keeping up, alert and watchful. He even had his blaster ready to fire at a moment’s notice, scanning the jungle for threats while Ben guided them towards their destination.

_We make a good team_ , Ben read from Hux’s mind, and the thought made him lose track of the base for a moment. Hux confused him; he sometimes read fondness from him, and some sort of tension definitely existed between them, but he also was skittish. He stroked his hair and then refused to run away with him. What did Hux even want from him?

He was jarred from his train of thought thanks to a sudden burst of panic from Hux, giving Ben just enough time to avoid running his speeder bike into a tree. He swerved around it and focused once more, even as Hux continued to project a very distracting stream of anger, aggravation, and fear in the aftermath of Ben almost turning himself into a spectacular fireball. Ben knew that whatever was up with Hux, he couldn’t allow himself to become distracted like that again, not if he didn’t want to get them both killed. 

He stopped them about a mile and a half out from the base and parked his bike next to a particularly large tree. Hux parked nearby and slung himself off the bike nimbly.

“You idiot,” Hux yelled the moment he was on the ground. “Have you ever even ridden a speeder bike before? I thought I was about to watch you get yourself killed, and then who would take care of this dark Jedi or whatever it is?!”

Ben wondered if he should put himself in danger more often since it seemed to result in this overprotective behavior from Hux. “Sorry,” was all he replied. 

“Be more careful,” Hux ordered, and stalked off ahead, pushing some vines out his way with vicious force.

The rest of the hike to the base was uneventful other than the fact that Ben was seriously beginning to regret wearing black in the tropical heat, even after leaving his heavy cloak with the speeder bikes. He wiped sweat from his brow and glanced over at Hux, who looked like he hiked in the jungle on a weekly basis.

“You weren’t in this good shape during the First Order years,” Ben commented. “I remember some missions off of the Finalizer where you complained about everything and hated leaving the shuttle.”

“People change, Ren,” Hux said. “I haven’t exactly lived the cushy life of a First Order general in the past five years. Or of a Skywalker Jedi.”

Ben scowled. Hux’s resentment over his perception of what Ben’s life back home was like was seriously beginning to get on his nerves. “It’s not like that. My life is far from ‘cushy’.” 

Hux looked skeptical as he pushed a particularly tall fern away from his face. 

Ben continued, determined to make him understand. “Do you know what it’s like, to have your sins forgiven but not forgotten? Yes, I was allowed to return to my family, but do you know at what cost? I’m avoided and isolated. They all remember what I’ve done. My mother looks at me and sees my father, the father who _I killed_. Luke looks at me and sees the students I slaughtered. They speak pretty words about forgiveness and second chances, but I’m a Jedi, Hux. I can feel the thoughts they don’t speak out loud; I know they still feel uneasy around me. Do you know what that’s like? What a lonely existence that is?”

Hux had stopped and was staring at him. “Ren,” he murmured.

“Yes, my family has money, and yes, I’m allowed to live in the Republic without a price on my head or being executed, fantastic. But I barely have anything worth living for!” Ben was not going to start feeling despair again, not now, when he needed to be strong as they approached their goal. “And the worst part is, I atoned for my crimes! When I returned, Luke made me _feel_ what it was like when the Hosnian system was destroyed, when I slaughtered his students, when I tortured our enemies. My mother made me feel what it was like when my father was killed, the huge hole it left in her heart. I live every day with the knowledge of all of the things that I did, and the pain it caused others. Do you know what that’s like? I think sometimes execution would have been a kindness.” He’d never said any of these thoughts aloud before, terrified to even voice them, but something about Hux, about their shared past and shared crimes, made him easier to talk to.

He could tell that Hux was currently not sure what to say in response to his outburst.

“Do you regret destroying the Hosnian system?” Ben inquired. For all of his own crimes, Hux was even more notorious of a war criminal than he himself had been. Had that weighed on him, like it had on Ben? Or did he still justify the crimes he’d committed?

Hux started walking again. “The base should be close,” he said instead of replying to Ben’s question. “Let’s leave the ethical discussion for later, shall we?” Despite that he was trying to seem like he was playing it cool, waves of complicated emotion radiated off of him. Ben couldn’t quite parse what they were. The feelings weren’t guilt or loathing or rage, three emotions he himself were very familiar with, but far more complicated. Regret? Frustration?

Ben and Hux approached from the south, slinking through the jungle until they were practically right on top of the base. Ben’s initial sense had been correct that it was built from old ruins – it was an abandoned building of some sort, pyramidal and towering out of the surrounding jungle, reminding him of the Massassi temples on Yavin IV. Myrkr’s settlement history was somewhat disjointed and mostly unknown, and he wondered briefly who had built this particular structure. 

He didn’t have time to wonder long, however, because a moment later, he sensed small empty pockets in the Force forming a half circle around them, clearly attempting to herd them closer to the temple itself. Ben glanced at Hux. 

“They have troops with those ysalamiri creatures,” he said. “They’re surrounding us and we’re cut off from the jungle.” Hux nodded and pulled his blaster from the holster, sinking into a fighting stance, while Ben unclipped the lightsaber from his belt and ignited it. The bright violet of the blade briefly blinded him after the dim light of the jungle. 

“Well,” said Hux as they stood back to back, waiting for the attack. “That is certainly not your old lightsaber. Purple?”

“It’s made from an excellent kyber crystal,” Ben replied defensively.

“Is it one from your grandfather’s collection?” Hux was clearly trying to distract himself from the uncertainty of the upcoming fight.

“Rey has my grandfather’s only other lightsaber,” Ben replied mournfully. “She wouldn’t let me have it.”

Before Hux could reply, blaster fire erupted from the jungle. Ben moved quickly and used his lightsaber to safely deflect it, sending it back in the direction that it’d come. The null spaces continued to close in, and Ben began to fear that he would lose the Force all together if they came too close. 

The troops were visible now, about ten of them arrayed around them with small lizard creatures on what looked like frames on their backs. “Aim for the creatures,” Ben instructed Hux. “If they get too close, I’ll lose the Force.” 

“They’re called ysalamiri,” Hux said snidely, even as he aimed his blaster and shot an ysalamir through its head. One pocket of Force emptiness vanished like it had never been present.

“Try to kill as few of the troops as possible though,” Ben added. “I’m a Jedi.”  
  
As if to make a point, Hux aimed at the soldier now carrying a dead ysalamir and fired again. The man collapsed, moaning in pain.

“I already have the blood of billions on my hands,” Hux replied. “I hardly think ten will damn me any more.” He took out another ysalamir that was coming particularly close and then the soldier carrying it. Eight to go. 

The soldiers were shooting back but aiming poorly, and Ben wondered if they had orders to take them alive. Before he could truly consider that thought, however, blaster fire grazed the side of Hux’s leg and pain lit his mind up briefly. Ben tracked the fire to the soldier who’d been responsible and deflected a blaster bolt directly into her face. She fell and didn’t move.

“So much for being a Jedi,” Hux sneered through his gritted teeth. They both knew that it hadn’t been an accident.

“Sometimes I’m still a little gray,” Ben admitted.

While they were distracted, one of the remaining ysalamiri-clad soldiers managed to get close enough to them that the Force disappeared from Ben completely. He glanced wildly back at Hux, who was still shooting back with grim determination and didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong. Ben tried to continue to deflect blaster fire, but without the Force to guide his movements, his timing was off, and he was forced to duck at the last minute to avoid a shot. Energy grazed his wrist, raised to deflect the incoming bolt, and then Hux gave a loud cry as the bolt went straight into his back.

Hux fell. There was blood, a lot of it, more of it than Ben had seen in a long time.

“No!” he yelled, dropping to his knees and waving his lightsaber in an arc to keep the soldiers away. “Hux!”

The remaining soldiers stopped shooting and one approached, a woman who was clearly their captain. “If you don’t want to join him, I suggest you come with us and cooperate,” she growled.

Ben felt Hux’s neck, but he’d never needed to check for a pulse in his life and wasn’t sure where to even look. He’d always just used the Force. He pressed his hand against Hux’s chest instead and felt his heart beat, but very slowly. “He needs medical attention!” he told the woman. “He’s still alive!”

“Come with us willingly, and we’ll get it for him,” she told him. Ben hated negotiating with enemies without the Force. Was she being honest with him? Was this the only way to save Hux? He had no other options. The Force was gone from him. Hux was grievously wounded. He had to believe that she would help him, because there was no other way out of this mess.

He stood and turned off his lightsaber. She held out her hand and after a moment, he glared at her and gave it to her. “Thank you for your cooperation,” she said. She turned to two of the troops. “Take him to the Master,” she ordered. They approached, and each one of them grabbed one of Ben’s arms. As they were walking away, he heard her give one final order.

“Kill the other.” 

“NO!” Ben shouted, trying to twist out of the grip of the soldiers, but it was no use. He was taller than they were, but he was no longer as muscular as he’d been as Kylo Ren, and they were short and stocky and had a lower center of gravity. Without the Force, he was essentially helpless.

The soldiers hauled him around the corner and into the pyramid just as he heard blaster fire from where they’d come from. 

“The moment I have the Force back, I’m going to burn this entire place to the ground,” Ben growled at the soldiers. “I’ll burn you all alive. I’ll destroy your minds, piece by piece, making you live your worst nightmares before your pathetic existences are snuffed out!” Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he couldn’t even scrub them away with his hands in the vise-like grip of the two men.

The soldiers ignored his threats and lugged him through maze-like passages to the center of the pyramid. “Do you know what it’s like to burn alive?” Ben continued as they dragged him. “It’s pure terror. You’re aware of pure agony in every part of your being. I live it every day in my nightmares, and I will make it your reality for killing him.”

“He talks a lot for a Jedi,” one of the soldiers said to the other one.

“We’ll see how much he wants to talk to the Master,” the other one replied, and they both laughed.

Ben hated them utterly.

They continued to haul him to the center of the pyramid, which opened up into a huge chamber lit by floating glow-lights reaching all the way to the top of the structure. A man sat at the end of the chamber in partial shadow on a large stone chair reminiscent of a throne. The soldiers dragged Ben directly in front of him and tossed him to the floor like he was insignificant. He took the moment his hands were free to scrub the tears from his eyes, trying to appear less pathetic as he met his newest adversary.

The man on the throne stood and moved into the pool of light, and Ben stared. He knew that face.

The facial features were younger than he’d seen in the holos from the Old Republic days, and definitely younger than the final holos from the Empire, but they were undeniable. 

“Hello, Jedi,” said the man who looked like Emperor Palpatine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have shipped Luke and Mara Jade since a very young age, and they were married and had a son in the EU books, so I couldn't resist the urge to include them in Rey's parentage. I'm very aware that none of this is canon and all will be jossed by Episode VIII, but at least in my small pocket of the internet, I had to make this Rey's backstory. Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

The Palpatine-lookalike in front of Ben looked to be around his own age, but still had the same distinct facial features that made his connection to the old Emperor utterly obvious. Could Palpatine have fathered a son? 

“Who are you?” Ben asked through gritted teeth, glaring up at this new stranger with the purest of hatred. 

A slow grin spread across the man’s face. “Yes,” he said reverently. “Even with the Force blocked from our use, I can see the hatred in your eyes. You will do nicely.”

“Who _are_ you?” Ben demanded again, louder this time. He pushed himself off of the ground and stood in front of him. “You can’t be—"

“Sheev Palpatine?” the lookalike asked. He gave a little laugh. “Oh, but I can be. The esteemed former Emperor realized that eventually he would perish, and he left behind a little gift.” He began to walk in a circle around Ben, who wished desperately for both the Force and his lightsaber. “The greatest dream for any Sith is to cheat death, after all. He had several cloning facilities created that would immediately work to produce a clone after his demise.” The Palpatine lookalike spread his arms wide. “After fighting the others, I am the last surviving clone, come to finish the work that my original started.”

“You’re a little late,” Ben snapped. “The galaxy is thriving under the rule of the New Republic. Our insurgency five years ago was completely crushed. But good luck.” Thinking of the First Order brought fresh thoughts of Hux, and he shoved his feelings down – now was not the time. He would mourn later, and perhaps soon he would even join Hux in death.

Somewhere, in a far detached part of his mind, he wondered how long he’d been in love with Hux. Now that he was aware of it, it seemed like it had been such an ever-present feeling. It had to have begun back during the First Order days, even though he had only realized it when Hux had been killed. What a depressingly typical story for any Skywalker.

Palpatine didn’t seem particularly disturbed by either Ben’s skepticism of his plans or his inability to pay full attention to the conversation. “Your little Republic only thinks that it’s strong. There is a weakness in any democracy, ready to be exploited. I only need one more thing before I’m ready to put my plans into action.” He smiled slowly again, his face cruel. “Every Sith Master needs an apprentice.”

Why did this keep happening to _him_? Couldn’t the dark forces in the galaxy find someone else to harass?

“Are you referring to me?” Ben asked. “Because I’m awful at using the dark side.”

This seemed to throw Palpatine for a loop. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I’ve tried. I spent fifteen years of my life as a servant to another dark Force user and the light side wouldn’t leave me alone. The dark side takes serious effort. I don’t know how you aren’t all exhausted constantly.”

Palpatine stared at him, the confidence gone from his expression for the first time. “That’s impossible. The dark side is seductive. It’s easy. It holds limitless power for those who can master it.”

Ben shrugged. “That may be true, but I even killed my own father and I couldn’t master it.”

Palpatine turned slightly red. “Impossible. I see the hatred in your eyes! If we had the Force right now, you could access the dark side easily.”

“Why don’t you give me access to the Force and see for yourself?” Ben asked. Unfortunately, the clone clearly wasn’t that stupid, and Palpatine only laughed at him.

“Nice try, Jedi,” he said. “You may not have the same philosophy as the Jedi from my original’s reign, but I don’t believe that you’re unable to use the dark side. Everyone can use the dark side.”

“My former master would back me up if my cousin hadn’t murdered him,” Ben told him.

“What’s your name, Jedi?” Palpatine demanded.

“Kylo Ren,” said Ben without even stopping to think about it. 

“I know that name.” Palpatine walked in a circle around him. “And I know who you are now, Ben Solo.” He stopped right in front of him and looked him straight in the eyes. “You’re a _Skywalker_.” 

A chill went down Ben’s spine.

“You would be perfect,” Palpatine continued. “Join me, Ben Solo. I can offer you power, a place at my side, a new insurgency that will actually succeed. We’ll crush the Republic beneath our feet. You would be the next Darth Vader.”

Ten years ago, Kylo Ren would have been tempted. Five years ago, Ben Solo would have also maybe been tempted. 

In the present, this man had murdered Hux.

“I’m not joining your stupid Empire,” Ben snapped. “Any possible leverage that you had to get me on your side is gone. I’m really going to enjoy destroying you.” For the first time since the captain had ordered Hux’s death, he allowed himself a slight smile. “I may not be very good at using the dark side, but I’m very, very good at violent destruction.”

“You’ll have time to think about it.” Palpatine was seemingly unworried by both Ben’s lack of interest in joining him and in his threats. He looked at the guards that were still hanging out behind Ben. “Take him to one of our special rooms. Make sure he’s very comfortable.” 

Ben was dragged back out and escorted to a room that was relatively well furnished with a large, comfortable bed, a table, and its own separate refresher. The guards also gleefully showed him alcoves surrounding the room where ysalamiri had been installed. He would have no access to the Force in this prison, which was obviously what Palpatine had intended.

They left him in his room and locked the door behind them, leaving Ben with nothing better to do than to relive that moment when the captain ordered, “kill the other”, over and over again.

* * *

Ben refused to eat the first two meals that were brought to him, but the third time food was delivered to his little room, he couldn’t help himself and scarfed it down. He paced up and down, tried to meditate, stared at the wall and thought of Hux. He was cut off from the Force, he was isolated and abandoned, and he was probably going to die.

Palpatine left him in those Force-proof rooms without any human contact outside of meal deliveries for three days, leaving Ben with little more to do than stew in his grief. They hadn’t even provided him with any form of entertainment to distract himself; no books, no holos, not even a datapad. He spent a lot of time sleeping, but visions of Hux haunted him even in his dreams. Sometimes, he was bloodied and in pain, or dying in Ben’s arms. Sometimes, he was heartbreakingly whole.

Ben also spent some significant time envisioning exactly how he would torture and kill Palpatine’s clone as revenge for Hux.

By the time Palpatine called for Ben to be brought in front of him again, he was quite an emotional wreck. He hadn’t even formulated a way out of his situation, but he had resigned himself to almost certain death. 

The guards that escorted him from his room left him in the same place where he’d stood three days before, and he stared up at Palpatine hollowly, barely caring what became of him. He’d failed his mission in every sense of the word. What did it even matter what Palpatine did to him?  He couldn’t return to Luke like this anyway. Maybe Luke would send Rey after him when Ben failed to return. She’d already killed Snoke; a clone of Palpatine shouldn’t give her too much trouble.

“Have you given any thought to my proposal?” Palpatine asked.

Ben shook his head. “Just kill me already,” he said. “We both know that’s how this is going to end. At least if you kill me, I’ll finally be happy.”

Palpatine regarded him with disgust. “You’re a mess,” he said derisively, clearly having second thoughts about whether or not he wanted Ben as a minion. “What’s wrong with him?”

The guards next to Ben both shrugged. “We fed him and made sure he was drinking water, like you commanded. Other than that, we didn’t do anything.”

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” Ben snapped, standing up straight. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. You killed—"

A blaster bolt rang through the air of the audience chamber, stunning Ben into silence. It wasn’t aimed at him. It didn’t even seem to have hit anything, until a second glance revealed that the ysalamir being carried by the guard on his right was dead and falling off of its nutrient frame.

Another shot rang out.

The Force returned to Ben, and it was like the world went from black and white to glorious, living color. He threw up mental shielding so that Palpatine couldn’t manipulate him. Then, he pulled one of the guards’ blasters to him, taking out the two formerly ysalamiri-bearing guards behind him before they could react. He rolled out of the way of blaster fire from the other guards stationed at the door and aimed the muzzle of his own blaster against Palpatine’s throat.

“Stop shooting or I’ll kill him,” he threatened. Turning to Palpatine, he grinned, feral and wild, feeling alive for the first time in days. “You can’t deflect a blaster bolt from this close, can you? I certainly can’t.”

The mysterious shooter from earlier fired again, and another guard standing at the far edge of the audience chamber fell over. The remaining guard, realizing the tide had turned against him, turned and fled the room, leaving Ben and Palpatine alone.

A flash of a bright presence came through the Force, a _familiar_ bright presence, and Ben’s heart leapt into his throat, even as he barely dared to hope.

But he had been right. Hux rappelled from one of the balconies near the top of the pyramid down to the bottom floor, landing right next to Ben. He was a little winded from the effort, and he clutched his side as though he had a wound there, but he definitely looked very much alive.

Ben drank him in with hungry eyes. “I thought you were dead,” he said brokenly.

Palpatine glanced between the two of them. “Ah,” he said knowingly, ignoring the blaster against his throat. “I see I miscalculated. In making you think we’d killed this man. I thought it would isolate you and make you realize that you should join me. I didn’t realize you were lovers." 

Ben felt his cheeks heat at the word ‘lovers’ and dug the muzzle of the blaster into Palpatine’s neck more firmly. “Shut up. I believe I made a promise to you about what I was going to do to you. I intend to keep it.”

“Ren, there’s no time for your theatrics,” Hux told him, his tone less harsh than normal. “We have to get out of here. Reinforcements will be coming soon, and I hardly doubt a shot to the neck is going to kill him.”

Palpatine grinned and let a bolt of Force lightning travel through the blaster to shock Ben’s hands. Ben yelped and dropped his weapon, quickly jumping out of reach of Palpatine to stand a few feet away. 

“You’re going to regret not joining me, Jedi,” Palpatine snarled. “Next time, I really will kill your lover, and I’ll make you watch. You said you’d destroy me, but you have no idea who you’re up against!”

“We have to _go_ ,” Hux snapped. “Ren, get over here!”

“You won’t win,” Ben told Palpatine, straightening back up. Palpatine shot Force lightning in his direction which Ben caught easily in his own hands. Palpatine hadn’t seemed to expect this reaction; he quickly stopped throwing lightning in Ben’s direction, and Ben’s own hands crackled with white fire, ready to send the lightning back at him. 

A troupe of guards came running through the door of the chamber at that moment, all with blasters drawn. 

“ _Ben!”_ Hux yelled. “We have to get out of here _now_!” Hearing his real name, Ben looked up and saw the guards. He had to admit that Hux had a point; this was currently a battle that they were unlikely to win. He let the Force lightning dissipate completely from his hands and ran to Hux’s side. Hux grabbed him around the middle and tugged on the rappelling wire that he’d used to descend. Ben grabbed the wire as well, wrapping his other arm more firmly around Hux. 

“Going up?” he murmured.

“Finally,” Hux snapped with a clearly-exaggerated roll of his eyes. “I thought you two were going to pontificate at each other forever. Not everything has to be so dramatic.” Just as the guards began to shoot, Hux’s retractable wire pulled them back up to the ceiling of the pyramid and through to the balcony. After they were on solid ground once more, Hux unattached the connecting bit of the rappelling wire from the wall and shoved it in his backpack.

Hux led him out through the adjoining room. “We can get out through here. It’s unlikely our speeder bikes are still in the jungle, but they have a hanger where we should be able to steal a ship.”

Ben still hadn’t even quite processed that Hux wasn’t dead. “What even happened to you? How are you alive?”

“Ren, I don’t think now is really the time—“ Hux began.

“Do you know what it did to me, thinking you were dead?!” Ben demanded. “You don’t get to act like it’s no big deal that you’re still alive. I saw your blood. I heard that captain give the order to kill you.”

“I was pretty badly wounded,” Hux explained as he grabbed Ben by the arm and dragged him down an adjoining corridor. “But I was healed.”

“Why would Palpatine’s forces heal you?” Ben asked. He sensed small empty pockets of the Force moving throughout the temple now, trying to corner them, but they’d already moved quickly enough to escape the first knot.

“It wasn’t his forces. It was…well, you’ll see for yourself when we get to the hanger.”

Ben was skeptical, but he was too busy concentrating on tracking Palpatine’s soldiers via Forceless spaces to question Hux further until they were out of there. “There are three guards coming up, all with ysalamiri,” he told Hux.

Rather than fight the guards head on, Hux ducked them both into an alcove off of the main corridor before any of the soldiers rounded the corner. He and Ben crouched right next to each other, in each other’s space, Hux’s harsh breathing sounding in Ben’s ear. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anything so wonderful.

The guards ran by, leaving Ben momentarily without the Force. He clutched at Hux’s hand, mostly to make sure he was still there, and to his surprise, Hux clutched back, lacing their fingers together. Ben glanced over at him and Hux had his lips pressed together in grim determination, not looking at Ben at all. The Force returned a moment later.

“It’s safe,” Ben whispered, almost afraid to break the spell. 

Hux had no such reservations. “Come on, Ren,” he said, pulling Ben out of the alcove by their joined hands and continuing down the corridor. He didn’t let go, his hand warm in Ben’s own, and Ben clung to the human contact like a lifeline to his sanity.

They reached the main hanger bay with no further run-ins with ysalamiri or guards. The hanger was located at the back end of the pyramid and looked like it had been constructed out of the rubble of some previous ruin. It opened into a wide clearing in the jungle, and there were minimal guards scattered about, none of them with ysalamir frames on their backs.

Hux raised his blaster as though he intended to shoot them, but Ben had a less risky idea. “Hold on,” he whispered, his mouth right next to Hux’s ear. Hux shivered and clutched his hand tighter, which was an interesting reaction that Ben filed away for later. He reached out using the Force and began to lift one of the small fighters at the very edge of the clearing up into the air.

The few soldiers in the hanger shouted, all of them running after the fighter with their guns drawn, leaving the interior hanger bay clear with several small craft ready to choose from. Ben turned and smirked proudly at Hux. 

 _You won’t get away from me that easily!_ Palpatine’s voice boomed in his head, startling him out of his connection with the Force. The fighter he’d been lifting dropped to the ground sharply and crumpled. Ben flung Palpatine out of his head, but the damage had been done. The guards had determined that no one was inside the fighter and were starting to look around suspiciously for the source of the movement.

One of the smaller ships, barely larger than a shuttle, made a small sound, and Hux pointed it to. “There she is,” he said inexplicably. “Come on!” He tugged Ben over to the ship, keeping to the shadows to avoid alerting the now-suspicious guards, and they crept up the ramp. They emerged into the cabin to find a familiar woman, older than Ben remembered her but with the same sardonic expression.

He couldn’t believe it. “Mara?!”

She was seated in the pilot’s chair getting the ship warmed up for take off. “The one and only,” she replied. “Close the hatch and get the ramp up, will you? And then strap yourselves in somewhere, this is going to be a bumpy ride." 

Hux pressed the button to close the hatch and stow the ramp, still holding Ben’s hand. He pulled him over to two chairs with safety belts right next to each other in the lounge area of the ship, and they both sat, letting go of one another to strap themselves in. The ship rocked with blaster fire. “Damn!” Mara swore. “They noticed us.”

“How long will it take us to get out of here?” Ben asked anxiously.

“The ship’s systems are still booting, but once they finish, we can get out of here immediately,” Mara replied. She turned and looked at him, her green eyes sharp. “You’d better have an explanation for why I lost touch with my kid for fifteen years, Ben Solo.”

Ben swallowed. “I was possessed by a dark lord?” he asked weakly.

“Not good enough,” Mara replied. “I was Emperor’s Hand for the first decade of my life and I didn’t use it as an excuse to be a jerk to my family.” The ship rocked again and Mara swore more fiercely, turning back to the controls and ignoring them once more.

Ben couldn’t handle his family drama at the moment. He turned to Hux instead. “I thought you were dead,” he said hollowly, stuck on that one point over and over again.

“I know,” Hux replied. “I’m not sorry. I had no control over it.” It was a typical Hux response, so typical that Ben started laughing. Then the laughter abruptly turned into several sobs, uncontrollable and sudden. Hux didn’t seem to know what to do, and he sat there awkwardly, kind of patting Ben’s hair. “Ren. I’m not dead. I’m alive and I intend to stay that way. Jade healed my wound, and I’m fine.”

Ben looked up at him, embarrassed at his outburst. Hux stared back for one long moment and then leaned in, pressing his mouth softly against Ben’s. Ben froze in shock before his mind registered what was happening and he kissed back fervently, all of the despair and loss and grief finally having an outlet as he framed Hux’s face with his big hands and pulled him closer. Hux kissed back just as passionately, pulling against the restraints that kept them in their seats.

“We’re taking off!” Mara shouted, clearly not paying attention to what was going on behind her. “Hold on!” The ship lurched, and Hux and Ben parted, breathing heavily and staring at each other with wide eyes. Hux had color high on his pale cheekbones and his mouth was swollen and red. Ben wanted to kiss him again immediately, so fiercely that it hurt. 

The ship rattled its way out of the hanger, followed by blaster fire, and once in the clearing, Mara took them on a swift ascent over the jungle into orbit. “Well the good news is, Palpatine doesn’t seem to have any ships other than those little ones in the hanger that can follow us,” Mara said. “The bad news is, he’s almost certainly going to accelerate his plans now that we’ve escaped.” 

Ben reluctantly tore his eyes away from Hux’s mouth. “His plans?” he asked weakly.

“He wants to take over the galaxy again,” Mara said. “Where’s Skywalker training his new baby Jedi this time? I need coordinates.”

Ben looked at Hux again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “We can’t go there with him.” Hux made a slashing motion with his hand, trying to tell Ben to shut up, but Ben trusted Mara and he wasn’t about to let anyone hurt Hux, not now. “Hux is on the run from the Republic. Luke will turn him in.”

Mara took this information in while Hux glared at Ben with his arms crossed over his chest, clearly not thrilled that Ben was giving away his current status. Ben wondered if this would prevent any future kissing, his eyes drawn back to Hux’s mouth.

“He could request sanctuary with the Jedi. Skywalker has an honorable streak a mile wide; he would never turn him in,” Mara suggested.

“Luke’s changed,” Ben admitted. “He’s not the same person you l—you knew. I don’t know what he’d do anymore.” Beside him, Hux was drawn and nervous, clearly unhappy with this entire line of thought.

“You can drop me off on some Rim world before you go to Skywalker,” he suggested.

“No!” Ben snapped vehemently. “I’m staying with you.” They glared at each other, at an impasse.

“Well, we need to make a decision,” Mara told them. “Ships are taking off from the Skylarville region and a few of them are big enough to cause a problem for us. If bringing Hux into Republic space is such a big deal, we’ll keep him on the ship. We don’t have time to drop him off anywhere else. If Skywalker creates a problem for us, _I’ll_ deal with him.”

“Fine,” Ben said. He glanced at Hux, who glared back and didn’t uncross his arms. Ben kind of understood – after years on the run, successfully evading capture, the last thing he would want to do would be to risk it all by going into the heart of the Republic. And yet… “Luke’s training students at a Jedi temple he founded on Chandrila.” 

Mara punched the coordinates into the navcomputer. “We’ll be there in four days.” She pressed the button to send them into hyperspace, and the stars outside the viewport streaked into starlines. At least Palpatine’s ships were not as fast as those purchased by General Leia Organa, Ben thought with amusement.

“My lightsaber is still down there!” he suddenly realized. “They took it from me.”

“Oh, right,” Hux said. “I have it. But I’ll only return it to you if you promise me that you won’t let them execute me.” His eyes were hard as flint. “I am not going back to the Republic. I’m not ashamed of what I did.” The Force suggested otherwise, but Ben still couldn’t quite read all of Hux’s feelings surrounding the destruction of the Hosnian system.

Mara left the cockpit and came to sit with them, giving Ben his first opportunity to study her. There was gray streaked through her red hair now and slight wrinkles on her face, but she still had the same no-nonsense look. “Look, kid,” she said to Hux. “I’ve done a lot of awful things in my life. I was a trained assassin for the original Palpatine. I worked for the remnants of the Empire for awhile, trying to fight the formation of the Republic. I’ve been a smuggler.” She shrugged. “Nobody’s executed me yet. I even sort of married into the Republic’s royal family, for a time." 

Ben snorted. “Don’t call us that.”

Mara continued, ignoring him. “I don’t know what you did, but—"

“I destroyed an entire star system, actually,” Hux said coolly. “Five inhabited planets. Do you have any wise platitudes about that? The billions of lives that are on my hands?” Mara didn’t react, but she also didn’t speak, clearly processing this information. “I didn’t think so.” Hux was unbearably smug about it, like he was almost proud of the atrocity of his crime.

Ben was fiercely angry. “How can you just act like it was nothing?” he demanded. “I know you feel more about it than that. I live with it _every day_ , Hux. They scream their way through my dreams.”

“I was serving what I thought was the right side,” Hux snapped. “It was necessary for the achievement of our objectives.”

“Wow,” said Mara. “And I thought _my_ past was damning.” She turned to look at Ben. “And _you_. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about what you did.”

Ben glared at her. “I think I’ve been punished ten times over for being brainwashed as a child and dragged into the service of Snoke. I may have stolen your daughter from you, but I kept her alive! I saved her life! Do you know what Snoke would have done with her? And plus, you’ll get to see her in a few days." 

“Rey is on Chandrila?” Mara asked, her face unreadable.

“Unless Luke sent her on some mission, yeah.”

Mara glanced between the two of them. “While I’m tempted, I’m not going to turn your boy here into the Republic,” she said. “I might even be able to eventually forgive you for destroying my family. But neither of you are allowed to talk to me for the next few days unless you absolutely have to.” She stood up, shaking her head. “Leia, how did your kid turn out like this?”

“I don’t want to talk to you either,” Ben growled, angry at her comment about his mother.

Mara nodded curtly and walked off to one of the small cabins off of the main lounge area of the ship. It looked like there were two such cabins, which meant that he and Hux would have to share.

Hux was looking at him. “Your family has a lot of problems,” he observed. 

“I don’t want to talk about my family,” Ben told him. He turned and glanced at Hux, his eyes catching on his mouth again. “They’re all overdramatic and hold grudges forever. Are you mad at me for insisting we go to Chandrila? Time is of the essence.”

Hux raised an eyebrow. “’Time is of the essence’? Really, Ren?”

“It is!” Ben exclaimed defensively.

“And you call your family dramatic,” Hux said with a short, huffed laugh. “You’re the worst of the lot.”

Hux positively glowed in the Force next to Ben, alight with life. Ben still couldn’t believe he was really there, and he reached out and cupped Hux’s face before he could think about it. Hux froze, allowing Ben to run his fingertips along Hux’s cheekbones, brushing the small ridge of his mouth, down his nose.

“You’re actually alive,” Ben breathed.

“I was pretty sure we established this earlier,” Hux murmured. “I seem to remember you confirming it with your mouth.” There was color high in his cheeks again, but he held Ben’s gaze and licked his lips.  
  
Ben couldn’t resist such an invitation. He leaned in and kissed Hux once more, at first gently and then more insistent as the kiss continued. Hux made a small noise and unbuckled his restraints, pulling out of his seat so that he could straddle Ben’s lap, Ben’s hands sliding to his sides and then under his shirt to the smooth skin below as he kissed him as deeply as he could, confirming to himself that Hux was indeed alive. Hux’s heart was beating frantically where his chest was pressed to Ben’s own, and that heartbeat was grounding, almost enough to heal the desperate part of Ben’s brain that still hadn’t recovered from the events of the last few days. 

Hux clutched his hands in Ben’s thick hair, pulling slightly in order to get a better angle on his mouth. Ben pulled him in closer, running a hand down his back under his shirt, pressing into soft skin. 

Hux broke the kiss, breathing heavily, and pressed his forehead against Ben’s. They sat there breathing each other’s air for a few moments before Ben said, “let’s go to our cabin.” 

“No,” said Hux, pulling away.

Ben stared at him in aroused confusion. What did he mean, ‘no?’ He wanted to get Hux all to himself, reassure himself that all of him was alive and well, press his mouth against Hux’s scars to make sure there was no lasting damage. He wanted to distract himself and lose himself in oblivion for a few sweet moments before he had to face everything that had happened. He _wanted_.

“What do you mean, no?” Ben demanded.

“Ren,” Hux said. “This isn’t a good idea. Even you aren’t a big enough idiot to want to entertain this.”

“You called me Ben, back at the base,” Ben said softly, trying to change tactics. “I liked it.”

Hux shrugged. “You’re all the same person to me,” he said. “But calling you Ben feels strange.” _Too intimate_ , his mind fed Ben through the Force, which made Ben flinch slightly.

“You could call me ‘Solo’,” Ben suggested. It would be difficult, answering to the name he shared with his father, but he needed Hux to acknowledge that he was Ben Solo now. Hux thought about it for a moment. Then he climbed off Ben’s lap and disappeared into the small galley without answering.

Ben breathed for a moment, using one of Luke’s techniques for grounding himself when frustrated and reconnecting with the Force. It was intoxicating after three long days without it. Something about the encounter with Palpatine had shaken him far more than he’d expected. Luke had once explained that Ben would be susceptible to trauma for the rest of his life because of what Snoke had done to manipulate him as a child and the crimes that he’d committed under that influence. He’d taught Ben what he could to help him shore up his mental defenses and coping mechanisms, but the truth was that Ben was still pretty rotten at managing his own emotions. Kissing Hux had tempered the unharnessed energy and adrenaline that was left over from the escape from Palpatine’s base, but he still needed an outlet, and if sex wasn’t an option, he’d need to find something else. Meditation was not going to cut it today.

Hux returned from the galley with a cup of tea and set it on a small table; Ben wondered if making tea was some sort of similar coping mechanism for Hux. Instead of drinking it, however, Hux pulled his backpack up from where it had been stashed and rummaged through it, pulling out something wrapped in cloth. He walked back up to Ben and pressed it into his palm. It was his lightsaber.

“For some stupid reason, I’m trusting you with my life in Republic space,” Hux said sternly. “Don’t mess this up, Solo.”


	4. Chapter 4

Ben located a remote and spent most of the day down in the ship’s small cargo hold, practicing with his lightsaber and working out his excess energy. Every time he started imagining that Hux was still dead, he pushed himself harder until he was sweating and exhausted. From time to time, he also reached out to Hux’s bright presence with his mind, reminding himself that Hux was still there.

There wasn’t enough water for real showers, but Ben took a sonic shower that at least cleaned him of the sweat and grime. His clothes were filthy and he no longer had spares after leaving his bag at the hotel back on Skylarville, but a quick survey of the cabinets in their stolen ship revealed some nondescript soldiers’ uniforms. None of them fit him exactly, but they would have to do. 

The ship was quiet, with Hux and Mara were both in their respective rooms. Ben slouched in the pilot’s chair for awhile, watching the starlines and trying to meditate, but his mind was whirling too quickly for calm mental exercises. He reached out with the Force once again and touched Hux’s mind in the cabin beyond – Hux was reading on a datapad he’d found stowed in their cabin, but he was trying and failing to distract himself from self-centered panic about what was going to become of him. 

Ben gave up meditating and went into their shared cabin instead. Hux looked up from the datapad and just watched Ben, not saying anything. He was sprawled out on the bunk, which was not very large and definitely would be a squeeze for both of them. Ben seated himself down next to him.

Hux put down his datapad. “You seem to be less of a mess,” he observed.

“I worked some of it out,” Ben told him. “You should stop worrying. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Hux sighed. “You’ve already admitted that you’re on shaky terms with pretty much everyone in the Republic who matters, Solo. I’m not exactly filled with confidence at your declaration of protection.”

Ben gritted his teeth, wishing that Hux would just be cooperative for once in his life.

“I’m going to sleep,” he declared, surveying the small bunk. “I can try to sleep out in the lounge, or set up a bedroll on the floor.” Although he said this, he was hoping Hux would offer to share.

“That’s probably best,” Hux said stiffly. “Even you alone would barely fit in this bunk, much less both of us. Maybe if you weren’t the size of a Wookiee.”

“I’m not the size of a Wookiee. My uncle Chewbacca is much bigger.” Chewbacca was another family member who didn’t particularly like Ben anymore. He spent a lot of time protectively watching over Leia and glaring at Ben when he happened to cross paths with him.

Hux went back to his reading, seemingly done with this conversation. Ben frowned in confusion, not sure about this new dynamic. For some reason, Hux was closing himself off from Ben, just when Ben had thought that they’d passed the stupid dancing around each other. It was so frustrating that if he hadn’t been exhausted, he might have gone down to the cargo hold to do more exercises with his lightsaber.

Instead, he scrounged through the ship until he found a bedroll, which he unrolled onto the floor of the small cabin. “Good night, Hux,” he said crossly, pulling the blankets up over his head. Moments later, he was asleep.

* * *

Ben woke to find the ship shaking. 

“What’s going on?!” he demanded, sitting up in his bedroll. Hux was rubbing his eyes in the bunk above him, trying to get his bearings. “Is something wrong with the ship?”

“It would appear so,” Hux said, pulling himself out of bed. They both exited their room to find Mara in the cockpit, pressing buttons.

“Something is wrong,” she said, glancing back at them. “We’re being pulled out of hyperspace.” A moment later, the ship shuddered again and the starlines coalesced into stars, a giant ship waiting outside. “That’s an interdictor cruiser. I didn’t even know they still made them anymore.”

“We had some in the First Order,” Hux murmured.

A whispering began in Ben’s head, a soft murmur that he didn’t even notice at first. Another ship jumped into normal space next to the interdictor – an Imperial Star Destroyer. The whispering got louder.

“We have to get past the cruiser’s gravity well,” said Mara. “Go strap yourselves in, I’m not going to be responsible for getting you killed if I have to do some fancy flying.”

As Ben and Hux strapped themselves in the lounge, the whispering grew even louder. Ben looked down at his hand, where he was clutching his lightsaber.

 _Do it_ , said the voice in his head.

He looked at Hux.

The ship shook again from being fired on. Mara did some sort of evasive maneuver that sent Hux careening into Ben, pulled against his side. He was warmer than Ben remembered. The whispering didn’t stop.

Ben looked down at his face, achingly familiar. His finger settled on the activation button on the lightsaber. 

 _Kill him, and you can join me,_ Palpatine whispered.

It was like he was on autopilot. His finger activated his lightsaber.

The blade pierced Hux’s chest.

Ben woke up, screaming.

Hux woke up too, of course, wild eyed, and rolled over to stare down at him from the bunk. “What was that, Ren?!” he demanded, forgetting in his half-awake state to use Ben’s real name.  
  
“Nightmare,” Ben gasped out. “I think.” He detangled himself from the bedroll and blankets momentarily to stumble out into the main area and check the cockpit. They were still in hyperspace, Mara was nowhere to be seen, and his lightsaber was still in the lounge where he’d left it.

He quickly took his lightsaber and put it in the very back of a cabinet, as difficult to reach as possible. He then returned to the bed, where Hux was sitting up still looking alarmed. He slid back under the blankets on the floor. “I dreamed that I killed you,” he said softly into the soft light of the cabin. “Because Palpatine told me to.” 

Hux looked skeptical. “Charming.”

“I could hear him in my mind,” Ben confessed. “Like Snoke.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Then, Hux spoke. “Nobody’s going to possess you like Snoke, ever again. I’ll kill you myself before I let it happen.”

Ben breathed in harshly, hardly daring to hope it was true. “Would you?”

“Of course,” said Hux. “I may have served Snoke, but I would have been furious if he’d done the same to me as he did to you. I’d rather died than have my entire free will taken away. I chose the First Order on my own.”

 _I could make you kill him, if I wanted to,_ Palpatine’s voice boomed through his mind. 

It hadn’t been a dream, then. 

Ben put up Force shields and expelled any bit of Palpatine’s presence that had lingered.

 _I won’t let you,_ Ben sent back. _I’m stronger than you are._ He hoped against hope that it was true; his mind was run down after his three days as Palpatine’s prisoner, and his confusion about Hux’s behavior was just making things worse.

Ben didn’t tell Hux about Palpatine’s appearance in his mind, but Hux was watching him curiously and he realized he should change the subject. He still didn’t know how Hux had survived or come to be with Mara in the first place. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about what happened to you at Palpatine’s base,” he said. “How did you survive that wound?” 

Hux sighed and leaned against the headboard of the bunk. “The shot didn’t actually hit anything vital; I just lost a lot of blood. After you were dragged off, the soldiers brought me to one of the medical bays and left me with the droids. Jade had been undercover with Palpatine’s forces for months, using her former identity as the Emperor’s Hand to try to earn his trust, but she’d never quite succeeded and she was trying to find a way out when she heard about us being captured. She snuck into the medical bay and healed me using your weird mystical Force powers.” 

Ben raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t realized she kept up with her Jedi training,” he replied. Hux shrugged.

“I don’t know how much effort it must have taken, but I’m essentially good as new. After I was healed, I slept a full day and then Mara took me under her own wing, supposedly to keep an eye on me, but instead, she got me alone and asked if I was willing to help her escape. Obviously I was, so we saved you and stole a ship. The biggest difficulty was that we were waiting for Palpatine to bring you back to his audience chamber so that I could kill the ysalamiri and return the Force to you; he left you isolated for longer than we anticipated.”  
  
“Well then, I owe Mara my thanks for saving your life,” Ben murmured. “I don’t know what I would have done. The thought of you being dead…it ruined me.”

“You do tend to overreact,” Hux said flatly. “It’s a serious character flaw.” Ben smiled to himself at the sarcasm, which disguised a layer of fondness underneath it.

They went silent for a few moments, just listening to each other breathe in the artificial shipboard night. Ben felt his eyelids beginning to grow heavy, but he was afraid to fall asleep after Palpatine’s last attempt on his unshielded mind. “Tell me a story,” he ordered. “Keep me distracted.”

Hux glanced down at him again. “Seriously?”

“I need the sleep, but right now I’m worrying about Palpatine getting another shot at my brain. Give me something else to think about. Tell me about your life in Skylarville.” 

Hux was quiet for long enough that Ben thought that he wasn’t going to comply, but eventually he started speaking. “I arrived on Skylarville about a year and a half after the destruction of the First Order. The Republic had some of Skywalker’s Jedi after me, although I don’t imagine they told you about it, and a contact of mine on the Rim suggested that Myrkr was a good place to hide from the Force. I was skeptical, but at that point I had nothing to lose, so I landed in Skylarville using the identity of Hal Xulron.

“I laid low for months, waiting for someone to find me. I dyed my hair and learned to slouch and swagger like a smuggler. I met some locals and created a new persona, which we were trained on at the academy. Eventually, I fell in with Karrde’s crew, partly because he let me do all of my work on-world and never asked any questions. I provided lots of technical expertise and Karrde even let me design him a ship. I think at some point, they all became my friends.” Then, more softly. “I’d never really had friends, before that.”

Ben was drifting off, but he roused himself enough to ask sleepily, “what about Phasma?”

“Phasma was a friend, I suppose,” Hux mused. “But it wasn’t the same. She was a subordinate. In Skylarville, I had friends who were simply friends, and I lived an ordinary life for the first time since I was a child. I remember this day where we just took Correllian brandy to the beach and drank in the sun. I’d never wasted time in such a way before…” He paused. “Solo, are you still awake?”

Ben didn’t answer. He was asleep, smiling slightly to himself.

* * *

Ben worked on shielding his mind before sleeping, and Palpatine didn’t visit Ben’s dreams again during the remainder of the trip to Chandrila. After three more awkward days side-stepping Mara and strangely co-existing with Hux, they arrived at their destination. Hux and Ben spent a lot of time together, reading or watching holos to pass the time, and they didn’t speak about anything important again. Nor, to Ben’s disappointment, was there any more kissing or hair stroking. It was as though Hux was pretending that nothing had happened.

As soon as they emerged from hyperspace on the fourth day, Ben got on the comm to call the Jedi temple and speak with Luke. He asked if he and Rey could both be present when they landed, although didn’t tell him why, and soon Mara was piloting the ship into the hanger at the temple, right where Ben had left a week and a half before.

How strange it was, how life could turn completely upside down in little more than a week.

When they’d landed at the temple, Ben told Mara and Hux to stay on the ship while he dealt with Luke and Rey. Mara shook her head. 

“Frankly, I don’t trust you,” she said bluntly. “Plus, Luke’s already sensed me here; it’s hardly a surprise. I’m coming with you.” 

Hux crossed his arms across his chest. “Well, I’m not leaving this ship,” he told Ben. “You’ll get no argument from me.”

Ben swept his senses over the Jedi temple. Luke waited anxiously at the bottom of the ramp, his hand on Rey’s shoulder. Deeper in the temple, there was another presence, one he also knew well. Ben’s blood went cold.

He must have looked as shocked as he felt because Hux picked up on it immediately. “Solo? What is it?”

Ben swallowed hard. This was going to make this infinitely more difficult.

“My mother is here,” he said, not making eye contact with Hux or Mara. To demonstrate how little he wanted to discuss this further, he turned and stalked off the ship, Mara at his heels. 

For two people who had once been a couple and produced a child, Luke and Mara were surprisingly formal with one another.

“Skywalker,” Mara said, nodding her head once.

“Mara,” Luke replied, his voice a little higher pitched than normal.

Ben rolled his eyes; they were ridiculous. He wondered if his family had held him on a pedestal as a child partly because they were all so screwed up themselves. His mother and his uncle had both lost everything in the war, their adopted families murdered by the Empire. His father had long been a criminal and a scoundrel. Mara Jade had been groomed from childhood to serve the Emperor very similarly to the way that Snoke had eventually groomed Ben, leaving her as an angry and devastated young woman. It was a shock that their entire family hadn’t gone out in a blaze of glory before Ben himself had grown into the biggest disappointment yet.

Rey was bouncing on her heels behind Luke, filled with nervous energy. “Mom?” she asked questioningly. “You’re my mother, right? The Force tells me it has to be true, but I wasn’t sure if I’d ever meet you.” Mara gave a small nod, and Rey and Mara looked at each other for a moment before Rey threw herself into Mara’s arms, hugging her tightly. Mara looked so uncomfortable with the entire situation that Ben found it entirely amusing.

“There’s a third person aboard your ship,” Luke observed.

“Why is my mother here?” Ben countered. “Convenient that I don’t see her for two years and then she shows up on Chandrila just as I’m not on the planet.”

Luke sighed in exasperation. “You should ask her yourself. I think it might surprise you.”

Ben pinched his forehead, trying to stave off the inevitable headache that his mother always gave him. “Well, I need to talk to you, in private, before I see her. It’s about the third person on that ship.”

Luke nodded. He turned to Mara and Rey; Rey had released Mara and was talking to her a mile a minute about her new life, Finn and Dameron, the Resistance and the Republic, and Jedi training, managing to combine all of these topics into one. Mara looked a little shell-shocked, but she had a small smile on her face, the first of those that Ben had seen since their escape from Myrkr. 

“I’m going to leave you two to catch up,” Luke told them. “Ben and I have to debrief about his mission.”

“Oh, his mission,” Mara murmured knowingly, casting a look at Ben, who glared at her.

“Come on!” Rey chirped, grabbing Mara by the hand. “I’m constructing a new lightsaber; do you want to see it?” She tugged Mara off into the temple, leaving Luke and Ben alone.

Luke turned to look at the shuttle. “Who is he?” he asked.

The truth was really Ben’s only option; Luke would be able to sense any lie about Hux’s identity immediately. 

“Brendol Hux II from the First Order,” Ben said.

Luke knew that name. Everyone in the Republic knew that name. “The war criminal? You’ve captured him?” But clearly Luke knew it wasn’t so simple even as he asked the question.

“I love him,” Ben declared. Luke’s eyes widened slightly.

“Ben,” Luke said softly. “He’s a mass murderer. He has the blood of billions on his hands. He’s wanted for war crimes by the New Republic, and the moment they have him, he’ll be executed.” 

“I don’t want your pity,” Ben snapped. “This is a Jedi temple, right? The Jedi of old used to offer sanctuary to those who were on the run or in exile. You can offer him safety while he’s in Republic space.”

“The Jedi of old used to offer sanctuary to those who were _persecuted and oppressed_ and on the run or in exile,” Luke corrected. “Brendol Hux is none of those things. He has done terrible things. He tried to destroy our entire civilization. He would have killed your cousin, and your mother and I, without a single thought.”

“If you can pardon me and allow me to live among you, I don’t see that Hux is any different,” Ben argued stubbornly. “I’m also a war criminal. The blood of billions are also on my hands, the same as his. I helped him build and run Starkiller Base, I knew about the destruction of the Hosnian system, and I knew they were targeting the Resistance Base where my mother was, and I didn’t care. But I was different because I was family, wasn’t I? I thought the Jedi were all about forgiveness, but it’s just lip service. You don’t really forgive. You just pretend to in order to preserve the image that you’re all so _good_.”

Luke was angry; it was coming off of him in waves, even as he did breathing exercises to try to tame it. Ben didn’t care, since he was also angry that they wouldn’t even give Hux a chance. So what if he was a Skywalker and Hux was not? Why did the accident of birth make him more pardonable than another?

“We forgave you, Ben, because Snoke possessed you, which you made very clear when you returned to us. That doesn’t mean you didn’t assume personal responsibility, it’s true, but it does mean that it’s hardly unthinkable to provide you with the chance to make it right.”

“By that logic, Hux should be given that chance too,” Ben argued. “His father was part of the Empire and then the First Order, and he was shoved into the military academy when he was even younger than I was when Snoke got me. He was indoctrinated and brainwashed, maybe not by a powerful Force user, but by propaganda, like-minded people, and isolation. It came from his childhood too. Does he not deserve the chance at redemption, same as I’ve been given?”

Luke watched him curiously. “You really do love him,” he said at last.

Ben scowled. “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

“You have to admit, you’re prone to over-exaggeration.” Ben scowled further; anyone in this family calling someone else overdramatic was essentially the pot calling the kettle black.

Luke continued to study him for a moment. “You know, I think this is the most passionate I’ve seen you about anything since you were freed from Snoke,” he murmured. “All right, Ben. I’ll grant Brendol Hux sanctuary here at the Jedi temple, and even protect him from my own sister… _if_ he undergoes the same deep Force meditation on his crimes that you did when you first returned to us.”

Ben was stunned. “No, uncle,” he begged. “That was the worst thing I ever experienced in my life. I still have nightmares about them. I want to protect Hux, not traumatize him.” He felt resentment bubble up inside of him, unchecked. “I could never do that to someone I claimed to love,” he added.

Luke flinched visibly. “You would if it was a choice between that and their death,” he said quietly. “If they were your flesh and blood, but your own government was calling for their head on a stick. If the only way to appease that government was to make them regret their actions for every day for the rest of their life.” He closed his eyes as though the memory was painful. “Your mother and I never told you, but it was only the fact that I was able to use the Force to reflect the feelings of your victims back to you that saved your life.”

In hindsight, it seemed very obvious that Ben would have been the subject of the Republic’s wrath, same as Hux, but he had never realized how much his mother and his uncle had fought to keep him alive. 

“We do love you, Ben,” Luke continued. “It’s not unconditional. You’ve hurt us a lot. But we’re trying to move past it. Can you do so as well?”

“Please,” Ben begged. “Please save Hux. Please don’t traumatize him. It took me a month to stop jumping at loud noises.”

“It is possible that if you enter the meditation with us, you may be able to buffer his mind against lasting traumatic effects,” Luke said thoughtfully. “But I will not give sanctuary to anyone who does not understand the ramifications for murdering billions of lives, nor to someone who feels no remorse for those actions.”

“What if I told you he did feel remorse?” Ben asked desperately.

Luke fixed him with a stern look. “Does he?” he said, tuned into Ben’s mental state through the Force. 

Again, Ben couldn’t lie to him. “No,” he admitted. “He has complicated feelings about the destruction of the Hosnian system, but it’s not remorse. I think he regrets that it has led to him being branded a war criminal, but not the actual loss of life.”

“What a self-centered man,” Luke said.

Ben, who also was relatively self-centered when it came down to it, frowned heavily. “I still care about him,” he said. “I’ll try to buffer his mind like you suggested, if you’ll let me.”

Mara and Rey reemerged from the temple, Rey still chattering excitedly next to a wide-eyed Mara.

“She did not get this talkativeness and energy from me,” Mara said to Luke. “It’s all you, farm boy.”

“It took her awhile to get to this point,” Luke replied. “She’s healed remarkably well despite being abandoned at five years old on Jakku.” The subtle reminder of Ben’s actions made Mara fix him with an unhappy look again. Nobody was ever happy with him, even when he saved someone’s life.

“Have you filled Skywalker in on our old friend’s return?” Mara asked Ben, rather than starting in on him again. Ben shook his head and she turned to Luke. “So, Palpatine cloned himself. Surprise.”

Luke was even less thrilled to hear about this than he had been to hear about Hux. “Again? Seriously?”

“Wait,” said Ben. “’Again?’”

“My former master was paranoid, brilliant, and tenacious,” Mara explained. “He left cloning facilities all over the galaxy with cloned material of himself ready to go in case he died. I knew where most of them were from my time in his service, so Luke and I tracked them down and wiped them out.”

“Apparently we missed one,” Luke said drolly.

“You might have missed several, actually. He talked about battling with other clones and mentioned that he was the one who came out on top.” Ben distinctly remembered that point because he’d had the horrified thought that Snoke might have left multiple clones of himself behind as well. 

“I pretended for awhile to be his Hand, just as I had been to the original Emperor,” Mara told Luke. “The good news is that this Palpatine is younger and significantly dumber. The bad news is that he’s utterly obsessed with destroying you and retaking his place as Emperor.”

“Destroying _me_?” Luke asked incredulously. 

Ben didn’t understand why Luke was so surprised. “You killed the original,” he pointed out.

“My father killed the Emperor,” Luke corrected. “To save my life. It was his act of redemption.” Of course, _Darth Vader_ hadn’t had to relive all of his crimes from the perspective of his victims in order to receive redemption, Ben thought to himself uncharitably.

 _Because he died_ , Luke pushed gently into his head. Ben frowned.

“Well, we’re going to have to send a team to Myrkr to take care of him,” Luke continued out loud. “It may be tricky because most of my current Jedi are still in training. We don’t have a lot of Jedi in Ben’s age group.” The statement wasn’t even accusatory, but Ben looked away shamefully anyway.

“I’ll go,” Rey offered from behind them. She’d been listening in on the entire conversation without contributing. “I killed Snoke, I can do it.”

“Yes, by all means, send the Sithslayer to slay a Sith,” Ben said. “The rest of us are incompetents except for golden child Rey.”

“You already had your chance to slay this new Emperor,” Rey pointed out. “It’s my turn.”

“Children,” Luke admonished.

“I’m going with her,” said Mara. “My daughter has lived enough of her life without my help.” Luke began to shake his head but froze mid-gesture when Mara fixed him with an icy stare. “Don’t fight me on this, Skywalker. I have friends on Myrkr and I want to protect them.”

“I’m going back, too.” Ben stepped forward to stand with Rey and Mara. “I owe him for what he did to me, making me think Hux was dead.” Rey turned to Luke and mouthed, ‘Hux?’, but Ben pretended he didn’t see it. “Plus, he’s been sending me nightmares and taunting me.” He’d hoped this information would alarm the others a little more, but they didn’t seem very perturbed by it. 

“We’ll perform the deep meditation with Hux tonight, then,” Luke told Ben. “I can then grant him sanctuary for as long as you are gone…unless he’s going with you?”

“No,” Ben said quickly. “He should stay here. He’s too much of a liability.”

“So it’s decided,” Mara declared. “We’ll stay the night and leave tomorrow to go back to Myrkr and take care of the Emperor problem. Three Jedi should be enough to defeat him, especially with the Sithslayer.”

“Snoke wasn’t even really a Sith,” Ben muttered. “That name isn’t even _accurate_.” 

* * *

 Hux was, unsurprisingly, not thrilled about the terms of his asylum.

“Absolutely not,” he said to Ben after Ben explained his deal with Luke. “I’m not going through that. You told me yourself that you have nightmares about the experience. Why would I want to have permanent psychological trauma?”

“Do you want to die?!” Ben demanded. “Because that’s what going to happen if you don’t agree to this. My mother is on this planet, right now. She will take you into custody and you’ll be executed.”

Hux glared at him. “I don’t care. I’d rather die a thousand deaths than face the consequences of actions that I don’t regret.”

“You don’t regret the Hosnian Prime attack at all?” Ben asked. “It doesn’t weigh on your conscience even a little that you killed billions of people?”

“Is it supposed to?” Hux asked. “I did what I had to in service of my Order and my beliefs.” Despite his stubborn words, however, Ben could sense that complicated knot of feelings beneath the surface again, and he knew that Hux wasn’t nearly as ambivalent about the crimes he’d committed as he claimed.

“Well, if you don’t care that you’ll be executed, do you care what that will do to me?!” Ben stepped right up into his personal space, using his few inches of extra height to his advantage and towering over Hux. “You and I, we’re the same. You’re the only one who understands what I did, what I’ve gone through, who I am. What will I do if they execute you? How do you think I’d feel, having to watch you go through a farce of a war crimes tribunal, having to watch you die?" 

Hux stared back up at him defiantly. They eyed one another, neither of them willing to budge.

“Please, Hux?” Ben begged. “I’ll be with you the whole time. Luke’s allowing me to join in on the meditation to cushion your mind against the worst of the trauma.”

Hux’s eyes were wide and very green. Ben leaned over and smoothed down some of his dark hair, wishing it was still red. If Hux agreed to go along with this, he could even dye his hair back, which Ben would much prefer. He must have projected that last thought, because Hux blushed and reached for his hair himself, pushing Ben’s hand away. 

“Fine,” he said sullenly, trying to make it clear that he was backing down not of his own volition. “I’ll do it. But if it traumatizes me or turns me into a vegetable, I’ll never forgive you.” 

“I went through it, and I’m not a vegetable,” Ben pointed out. 

“That’s highly debatable.” Hux raised one eyebrow, and Ben couldn’t stand it any longer. He leaned down and pressed his mouth against Hux’s, kissing him softly. Hux kissed him back, and Ben spent one long moment savoring the taste of him, the softness of his mouth, and the warmth of him before Hux finally pushed him away, trying to scowl and look firm. “Ren, we talked about this. It’s a bad idea.” 

“Solo,” Ben corrected. He turned and walked off the ship, not even bothering to check and see if Hux would follow. What other option did he have?

Hux did indeed follow, albeit sullenly, and Ben led him to a small meditation room inside the temple. They thankfully didn’t pass any of the other trainees or, heaven forbid, his mother before they reached their destination. 

Luke was already waiting inside. “Please, be seated,” he instructed to Hux, gesturing to a pillow on the ground next to him. There was a third pillow as well, presumably for Ben. Hux eyed Luke suspiciously, radiating distrust and fear so strongly that it reverberated through the Force, and Ben didn’t even think – he reached out and grabbed hold of Hux’s hand.

Hux shook the hand out of his grip, glared at Ben, and sat down on the cushion like he’d been burned. Now was not the time to feel the sting of rejection, but Ben was disheartened by Hux’s mixed signals – he definitely cared about Ben, he definitely _wanted_ Ben, and he definitely wanted Ben present. But then he rejected all attempts that Ben made to get closer?

Ben sat himself on the third pillow, but Luke mostly ignored him. “The first step is to enter into a meditative state. This helps me connect with your mind, and Ben will be able to connect with you as well to buffer you from much of the shock.”

“I’ve never meditated,” Hux told him, determined to be stubborn and difficult. “I’ll do my best.” Ben could feel Hux’s inner perfectionism warring with his desire to be so bad at meditating that they couldn’t complete the exercise. It was the ultimate battle for Hux, and he couldn’t help himself – he tried again and laid his hand on top of Hux’s where it rested on the floor.

This time, Hux didn’t pull away. He laced their fingers together gratefully, and Ben wondered if it was because their hands were shielded by Hux’s long crossed legs and Luke couldn’t see. 

Hux reached a meditative state more quickly than any of them had expected. Ben, meditating beside him, was able to sweep past all of the remaining barriers between them and connect with his mind.

It was intoxicating.

Kylo Ren would have shuffled through all of Hux’s memories shamelessly, opening drawers and dumping out their contents, determined to find out if Hux had feelings for him. Ben Solo, for all of his insistence of being the same person, had indeed changed enough to learn that such a violation wouldn’t produce the result he wanted. He wanted to know, desperately, but Hux would never forgive him for such an intrusion. 

Hux was currently thinking about how scared he was, how much he didn’t want to face the consequences of his ill-thought-out actions (his own words, not Ben’s), and how nice it was to have Ben holding his hand. The last thought was muted, as though Hux was afraid even to voice it in his mind.

Luke entered Hux’s mind a moment later, and things got a little more crowded.

Ben kept himself nestled in a corner of Hux’s consciousness while Luke took control, reaching out with the Force. Ben didn’t understand the dynamics of how Luke managed this particular exercise, but it was almost as though suffering and pain left an imprint on the Force that Luke could access. Somehow, Luke would connect Hux with the reflected pain of those he had hurt, experiencing his crimes from the perspective of his victims. For Ben, that had meant feeling the terror of his Jedi classmates’ last moments as he slaughtered them. It had meant feeling the grief and loss and shock from their families and friends. His mother’s devastation. His father’s disassociation from anything related to him. The dissolution of their marriage. The fear and pain from many of his victims over his years of being Kylo Ren. 

It had also included the victims of the Hosnian Prime atrocity. His mother’s guilt and horror, wondering if the world would have been a better place if she’d never produced a child in the first place. Rey’s fury and anger, and Finn’s determination. The fear and courage in Poe Dameron’s heart as he’d faced torture at Kylo’s hand. His father’s deep belief in him and his disbelief as Ben’s lightsaber pierced him through. His mother’s deep, unending grief that began the moment she’d felt that loss.

Ben had emerged from the meditation crying. He hadn’t left his room for a week. He’d jumped at loud noises, and had nightmares where he was burning alive, the ground beneath him evaporating into a burst of energy. The nightmares had never really gone away, not completely. 

Ben wasn’t aware of all of Hux’s crimes, but he knew many that they shared. However, Luke’s goal wasn’t to re-traumatize Ben, and he respectfully kept Ben out of the actual experience, just allowing him to stay present, soothing, reminding Hux that everything he saw wasn’t happening to him, that the images were just reflections of things he had once done.

The experience was made even more brutal because Hux’s mind fought it in a way that Ben Solo’s hadn’t. Part of Hux felt guilt and shame for his crimes, but the majority of him hadn’t considered the people he’d hurt as anything other than collateral damage. He’d been protecting his own people, who he cared about fiercely, but those of the Republic? They had deserved their fate. There was still pride in his heart that he’d built such a weapon, that he’d been the one person in the galaxy brilliant enough to build something worse than a Death Star.

In his physical body, Ben felt Hux clutch his hand tighter. He stroked his thumb along the back of Hux’s hand, trying to soothe him, even though he knew this was something that could not be soothed. 

 _You must not get caught up in their pain_ , he told Hux in his mind. _Just know what it is so that you never do it again._ Ben had already been empathetic, returned to himself, when he’d underwent this. Would it have the same effect on Hux, who had dehumanized the Republic to the point that he felt no compassion for his enemies? Or would the incredible pain just make his mind reject responsibility for it even more? 

The human psyche was so complex, but as he waited to see the outcome, Ben realized that Luke was right. For all that he had done terrible things, for all that he was still Kylo Ren in many ways, Ben was still a Jedi. He’d relearnt compassion. Could he love someone who didn’t have the same capacity to understand the consequences of his actions, the humanity and sentience of his enemies?

It was easy to hate, to forget that enemies had a soul, had families and lives and loves and fears. It was easy to pretend that they were symbolic of everything he hated. It was much harder to walk into battle knowing that everyone he’d killed was a sentient being, same as himself. Would Hux be brave enough to face the far more difficult road? Ben honestly feared that if Hux did not show any remorse even after this exercise, Luke would turn him over to the Republic.

He needn’t have worried. As the process went on, terrible feelings flooded through Hux’s mind, a supreme sense of _what have I done_ combined with impossible amounts of loathing. He wasn’t sure what incident had sparked it, but he curled his mind around the feeling, reminding Hux that he was present and that _he_ didn’t loathe him, even if Hux was perhaps the person most deserving of loathing in the entire galaxy. Many would have agreed with him on that one.

Ben didn’t know how long the meditation lasted, but eventually he was thrown out of Hux’s mind, almost violently, and a moment later, Hux opened his eyes. He was not crying as Ben had. Instead, he was cold and scared, and deeply, deeply furious. Ben, still reading him via the Force, rode that fury to its origin and realized it wasn’t aimed at Luke or Ben; Hux was furious with himself.

“I have been a fool,” he spat, not making eye contact with either Ben or Luke. “I let my father use me, I let Snoke use me, and I was the weapon they wielded.”

Personal responsibility: still not a strength of Hux’s, Ben noted.

“I should have known better,” Hux continued. “I should have…said _no_. Starkiller Base was my magnum opus, my masterpiece. It was brilliantly constructed and designed. I was so focused on the technical aspect of it all, the immense power it wielded, and how pleased the Supreme Leader would be with me, I didn’t even care…” He turned his head towards Ben and their eyes met and held. “I didn’t even _care_ that billions died.”

“Do you care now?” Luke asked softly.

“…I don’t know,” Hux replied honestly. “It’s such a huge number that I can’t even wrap my head around it. But I do understand that it was vastly _stupid_.”

Luke looked like he’d bitten into a very sour lemon.

 _He probably will never be a good person,_ Ben sent Luke through the Force. _That doesn’t change the fact that I love him. I’m not a very good person, either._ Ben and Hux were both horrendously bad at not being selfish; they probably deserved one another.

“If you wanted me to lay down crying with guilt,” Hux told Luke, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint. But if you wanted me to understand the exact gravitas of my previous actions and feel accountability for them, you’ve succeeded. If you want to know that I will never again kill sentient beings on such a vast scale, you can be confident in the fact that I will not.” 

Luke sighed. “I’ll grant him asylum for the duration of your mission,” he said to Ben. “And your mother and I will work to get the price off of his head. But afterwards, I want him gone.”

Ben had honestly not expected Hux to stay on Chandrila after they finished with Palpatine anyway, but it still hurt.

“But—“ he began.  
  
“It’s not a problem,” Hux said stiffly. “I hardly want to stay here anyway. The moment I can, I’m going as far from Republic space as possible, and I doubt you will ever see me again.”

* * *

Ben had expected Hux to retire to his rooms for the evening, but it turned out that he was much more resilient than Ben himself had been. Instead, Hux shamelessly joined Ben and Luke for dinner with Leia, Mara, Rey, and all of the other trainees. Since his mother was present on Chandrila, it was a more formal dinner than normal, held in the fancy dining hall that Luke had fashioned out of one of the larger rooms of the temple.

His mother looked tired, like she always did, but she enveloped him in an awkward hug the moment she saw him. Ben had always felt like this desperation to show affection came from the desire to prove that she could forgive, rather than actually caring for him, but after his conversations with Luke, he was starting to wonder if he’d always misjudged her.

His mother pulled back and looked straight at Hux, her mood darkening. “Brendol Hux,” she said coldly. 

“Uncle offered him asylum,” Ben said quickly. “You can’t execute him.” 

His mother’s eyebrows raised so high that he thought they were going to jump off of her forehead. “Luke told me about offering him asylum,” she said, “but he failed to mention that you were such a passionate advocate for it.” 

“I love him,” Ben declared dramatically, momentarily forgetting that Hux was beside him. “You can’t hurt him.” A huge flare of surprise and shock came from behind him, and when he turned to look at Hux, remembering he was present, Hux himself was bright red and flustered. 

“ _Ren_ ,” he hissed. “Why would you just—what are you—“ He broke off, sputtering.

“I thought you were calling me Solo now.” Sometimes Ben was a bit of a blockhead, but he wasn’t about to start apologizing for it now.

“Sometimes I fall back on old habits, _Ren_ ,” Hux whispered viciously. 

His mother watched this whole exchange with her eyebrows still raised, and he couldn’t tell if she was amused or horrified. Sometimes, with Leia, it was both. Before the situation could grow any more awkward, Ben boldly took Hux by the hand again and dragged him to sit at one side of the long table, as far away from his mother and Luke as possible.

Unfortunately, that meant they were near Rey, who was thick as thieves with Finn and Dameron, who had apparently accompanied his mother on this voyage. The three of them stopped their conversation when Ben and Hux sat beside them, and they all surveyed each other nervously. 

“General Hux?” Finn said, his voice higher-pitched than normal. After about six months of being Ben Solo again, Finn had figured out that Ben was pretty harmless and stopped being awkward around him, but apparently they were going to start this again.

“Stormtrooper,” Hux acknowledged.

“His name is Finn,” Rey told him.  
  
“There aren’t any stormtroopers anymore now that your little empire was defeated,” Dameron added.

Hux scowled. “I was being polite. I didn’t remember his designation, and I’m sorry I was never introduced to him by name.” Silence followed that statement, discomfort so thick that Ben could practically taste it.

“So, Emperor Palpatine, huh?” said Finn, the last person Ben had expected to break the awkward silence. “He cloned himself?”

“He might give Snoke a run for his money on being an insane power-mad dictator,” Rey observed. “Ben, are you worried he’s going to turn you back into Kylo Ren?”

“Why would you _ask_ that?” Hux asked, clearly not used to the giving-each-other-shit dynamic that Rey and Ben had. Ben had spent a lot of time feeling protective of Hux, but he’d never seen Hux protective of _Ben_. It was kind of nice.

Rey smirked and ignored Hux’s outburst. “So?” she prodded, looking at Ben.

Ben rolled his eyes. “He can certainly try. It was so difficult to be Kylo Ren that I can’t imagine going back. The dark side and I just don’t mesh well.”

Rey and her friends looked skeptical, and Ben couldn’t blame them. Despite all of his confident talk, he was a little anxious about it himself. What if Palpatine did succeed? He was already infiltrating his dreams; what if he gained more influence?

Dinner was long and awkward. His mother kept throwing him _looks_ , and Rey and Finn and Dameron were all insufferably cheerful for some reason, probably because of Ben’s discomfort. Hux’s pallor began to fade halfway through the meal and his eyelids were at half-mast, clearly tired. It had been a taxing day, and Ben stood up and guided Hux up out of his chair as well. Dessert hadn’t even arrived yet.

“Hux is exhausted. I’m going to help him find his rooms,” Ben told the table. Hux looked slightly embarrassed to have his tiredness pointed out, but he didn’t argue, which was how Ben knew that he was definitely on his last legs. Ben guided him out, right past his mother, whose eyes caught on the hand that he had pressed to the small of Hux’s back.

She raised her eyes to look at him and he met her gaze squarely. He was unashamed of Hux, even if everyone thought him a monster or a murderer.

He escorted Hux to his room. “Sleep well,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll be right next door if you need me.”

 Hux snorted. “I won’t need you,” he assured him, and the door slid shut in Ben’s face. 

Ben stared at the smooth metal of the door in front of him and sighed. This was doomed anyway, wasn’t it? Hux was going to leave him to live as far from the reach of the Republic as possible, even now when he had the possibility of receiving a pardon. Ben would have to return to Chandrila after Palpatine was taken care of, as he always did, so that Luke could keep an eye on him.

He sighed and went to his own rooms to sulk. Nothing ever worked out right for Ben Solo; maybe Hux was right to keep a distance between them. It was just torturous, to have been lonely and isolated for so long and to finally find someone who filled that empty place inside of him, who appeased that ache. It was also terrifying, to have his one chance at happiness resting on a single, fragile human being. Hux was selfish and occasionally cruel and Ben didn’t understand why he was denying the electric attraction that sizzled between them, but he was also the only person who _understood_ what Ben had gone through on such a visceral level.

Later that night, a tap sounded at his door. Thinking it was Hux, Ben opened it without checking with the Force and found in surprise that his uncle stood there instead. 

“I’m sure you want to get some rest in order to be ready for your departure tomorrow,” Luke began, “but I wanted to talk to you before you face Palpatine again. I hope you don’t mind?”

Ben minded, but after a long, emotional day, the last thing he wanted to do was get into another fight with a family member. He stepped out of the way of the door and said, “come in”. 

Luke rarely came to Ben’s rooms, and Ben watched him survey the sparse personal affects, the small amount of furniture, and the lack of art on the walls. “You’ve never been happy here,” Luke said.

Ben opened his mouth on instinct to deny it and closed it again without speaking.

Luke seated himself at the desk, leaving Ben the bed, which he sank onto wearily. “You are facing a great trial, coming up,” Luke continued. “I can feel it through the Force. There are many paths it could take you down, and not all of them are light.”

Ben had been aware of that, the feeling of balancing on a precipice, and he nodded.

“If you return to me after this, you will no longer be just a Jedi.” Luke watched at him intensely, as if trying to make a point. “If you survive this test, if you are able to resist Palpatine and the call of the dark side once more, you will have become a Jedi Master.”

This was pretty much the last thing that Ben had ever expected to hear out of the mouth of Luke Skywalker. He stared at him in shock, not trusting his voice.

“I’ve watched you grow immensely in the last five years,” Luke went on. “You came to us traumatized and damaged, scared and guilty. You barely spoke. You have regained some of yourself, learned to integrate Kylo Ren into Ben Solo, and found confidence once more. Although we do not always agree on what is worth fighting for, you fight for what you believe in. Your morals may have remained more gray than the average Jedi, but you continue to act according to your own code of honor. And you respect and protect those you love.” He smiled at Ben. “I wasn’t sure I’d have cause to tell you this, five years ago, but I am proud to call you my nephew.”

Ben was stunned. “I—“ he began hoarsely. “I don’t know what to say.”

“If you become a Jedi Master,” Luke continued, “I would be honored if you would be willing to help me work with the more difficult of my students, especially the ones with darkness inside them. You have faced that demon and found your way back. Your wisdom, your life experiences, may serve to prevent future tragedies.”

“But sometimes, you don’t even seem to like me,” Ben said softly, his voice choked up.

“Sometimes, I don’t,” admitted Luke. “But you are my nephew, and I have always loved you.”

Ben couldn’t hold back any longer, and he launched himself at his uncle, pulling him into a hug and burying his face in Luke’s neck so that he wouldn’t see the wetness in his eyes. The acceptance that he had worked so hard for, that he’d felt he’d never earn, had come to him in abundance.

“I would be honored to take your difficult students and to be a Jedi Master,” he said softly into Luke’s cloak.

He showed Luke out with another hug in the corridor outside his rooms, trying to ignore the dampness in his eyes at this sudden show of acceptance. After Luke left, Ben prepared himself for sleep, preparing to put up all of his Force shielding so that Palpatine couldn’t invade his dreams. It had worked on the ship, and he hoped it would work on Chandrila as well.

The door chimed once more, and Ben’s heart leapt with hope that this time, it would be Hux. He recognized the presence waiting for him, however, and he was again surprised.

It was his mother.

He considered pretending to be asleep and not answering, but his mother had probably already sensed that he was awake. He sighed and went to the door, pressing the controls to let her in.

“It’s late,” he said before she could speak. “I need to sleep for my journey.”

“You never even asked why I came to Chandrila,” his mother said sadly. “We barely were able to talk tonight. I just wanted to see you.” Her grief was like a knife that constantly cut him, and he wondered if it would ever stop. Some of it was still about his father, years later, but most of it was just about _him_.

This was not a conversation that Ben wanted to have in the hallway, especially since he suspected that Hux could hear through the thin walls of the temporary living quarters that had been constructed at the temple years ago and somehow become permanent. “Come in,” he finally said reluctantly, stepping aside from the door.

Leia sat herself on the bed. “I won’t stay long,” she said. “I just wanted to see you.”

“Why are you on Chandrila?” Ben asked. “The senate is still in session and you must be very busy. Why would you take the time to come here?”

His mother looked him over, as though she was taking him in. “You disappeared from the Force, Ben. For days. I thought you were dead, except it didn’t feel like death.” Leia, better than anyone, knew what it felt like through the Force when loved ones died. “I came to Chandrila to find out what had happened, where Luke had sent you. Poe and Finn accompanied me to have the opportunity to see Rey, but also to provide backup for me for when I came to find out what had become of you." 

Ben blinked, surprised for the first time. “You would have come after me?” he asked.

“You’re my _son_ ,” Leia told him. “I would never have rested until I’d found out what had happened to you. Luckily for us both, your presence reemerged the day that I arrived on Chandrila so I didn’t need to follow you out to Myrkr.”

Ben’s mind was reeling. “You’ve never been comfortable around me,” he accused. After his conversation with Luke, he wasn’t sure if he could take much more of this. What had suddenly brought this out in his family? His disappearance from the Force? His passionate defense of Hux? “Why would you care so much if I was killed?” 

“You have always been incredibly gifted in sensing feelings and emotions from others,” his mother said. “And you are also incredibly gifted in misinterpreting those feelings. Ben, I’ve been uncomfortable around you and stayed away because _you’ve_ been uncomfortable around _me_. Luke and I decided it was for the best, even though it broke my heart." 

Ben didn’t know what to say. This was more than he’d expected, and especially on top of his conversation with Luke earlier, he was going to need time to think about this.

“Well, I’m very much alive,” he finally spoke, horrified to hear how choked up his voice sounded. “And I’m going to try to stay that way.”

Leia nodded and stood back up. “You’re right, Ben. It’s late, and you need sleep to prepare for your return to Myrkr. I told Luke I would allow you all to take my ship since you’ll have a larger group, and it will be faster than the one you stole from Palpatine.” She moved forward and before he could step away again, she enveloped him in a hug as well. “Be safe, Ben,” his mother murmured, pressing a kiss on his forehead.

* * *

The group departed for Myrkr the next morning, bright and early. Somehow during the night, Finn and Dameron had been added to the party at the request of Rey. Ben was trying to figure out when would be best to say goodbye to Hux without pissing him off further when Hux himself emerged, wearing a new set of clothes and carrying his backpack, his hair a brilliant flare of red in the morning sun. 

Ben ran over to him and stopped in front of him, mesmerized by the brilliant color. “You dyed it back,” he murmured.

Hux shrugged uncomfortably. “I no longer have to hide, do I?” he asked. “I never felt like myself without it.” Ben could sense a slight hint of vanity through the Force, and he found himself charmed by the fact that Hux took so much pride in his hair color. “Your mother said she’s going to take me off the Republic’s bounty list as long as I behave myself,” he added.

It was quite a day for surprises from his family. “Seriously?” Ben gaped.

“I guess your histrionics had an effect after all,” Hux added. “Congratulations, you are adept at manipulating those that care about you.” He walked around Ben and continued towards the ship.

“Wait a minute!” Ben called, following him. “You can’t come with us.”

Hux stopped and whirled around to face him. “I’m going with you,” he said, his face pure determination.

“You’re not a Jedi, and this is a Jedi mission,” Ben told him.

Hux turned and looked at Finn and Dameron, raising an eyebrow.

“I have no control over my cousin’s choices. Don’t judge me for that.”

“They’re not Jedi,” Hux pointed out.

“They’re Rey’s non-Jedi,” said Ben. “You’re _my_ non-Jedi. You’re too much of a liability. I’d burn whole worlds to avenge you. You need to stay here.”

Hux looked embarrassed again. “You need to stop saying things like that,” he said grouchily. “Someone might actually believe you, and then where would your pretty redemption narrative go?”

“I don’t have a pretty redemption narrative.” 

“The walls are thin in your Jedi temple,” Hux told him wryly. “I heard some crying out in the hallway and saw you hugging your uncle goodbye last night. That looks a lot like redemption to me.”

Ben crossed his arms across his chest and focused his best sullen glare on Hux. “You’re not coming with us,” he said firmly.

“Skylarville was my home,” Hux snapped. “More than any other place has ever been in the last five years. I’m going back and I’m going to save it. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to use your Jedi mind tricks to do so, and I can promise that you’ll return to Chandrila to find me gone. You’ll never see me again.”

The Force screamed out that he was telling the truth, and Ben couldn’t risk losing him again. “If you get yourself killed, it will probably wreck me,” he confessed. “If you come along, can you promise not to do that?”

“How did you ever survive in the First Order?” Hux snorted. “You’re outrageously earnest. Were you like this there too and I just blocked it out?”

“I destroyed a lot of property,” Ben reminded him.

Hux sighed. “Yes, and I filled out the expense reports.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as though the conversation was giving him a headache. “All right, I promise I won’t get myself killed.” 

“Welcome to the mission,” Ben said. “We’re glad to have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just got a fandom tumblr so please [come find me](http://saucy-kate.tumblr.com/)!


	5. Chapter 5

Myrkr felt more ominous this time around.

Ben surveyed it in orbit from the viewports, examining the deceptively beautiful green and blue of the planet below. Little could he tell that the greenery on the planet’s surface actually disrupted sensory equipment, and that the land masses contained creatures that could block out the Force and leave a Jedi defenseless.

“Palpatine’s men run Skylarville,” Mara had explained the day before as they’d hammered out a plan of attack, gathered around the table in the galley. The nice thing about taking a larger ship was that there was plenty of room for meetings. “We can’t land there if we want to take them by surprise. They’d impound our ship and take us hostage before we even got into the spaceport. That means we’re going to have to land outside of Skylarville’s general radius and trek there on foot.”

“We stole speeder bikes last time,” Ben told her. “Maybe we could do something like that again?”

“Where are we going to steal speeder bikes from?” Rey asked. “Are there any other cities nearby that Palpatine doesn’t control?”

“Myrkr is sparsely populated,” Hux informed them. “There are only a few major settlements on the entire planetary surface. None of the others are anywhere near Skylarville.”

“So that means we’re landing in the jungle somewhere,” Ben said with a gusty sigh. He hated the jungle, and not just because it had messed up the aesthetic of his black on black attire. “Great.” 

“It _is_ great, because the jungle is one of the few ecosystems on Myrkr that doesn’t have a breed of vornskr roaming around,” Mara corrected him sternly. “Vornskrs are predators that hunt using the Force, which explains both why the ysalamiri block it and why vornskrs are particularly skilled in finding and attacking Jedi and the Force sensitive.” 

“That’s fortunate,” said Finn. “We don’t want predators attacking our Force sensitives.” He shot Rey a look, and she grinned at him while Dameron nodded in agreement. The chumminess of the three of them was beginning to irritate Ben. Who needed to be vocal and affectionate about their friendship all of the time, really?

“Well, at least _some_ of our Force sensitives,” Dameron added with a smirk at Ben. Talk about never forgiving a guy for a little torture seven years ago. Ben bit his lip in annoyance but refused to give Dameron the satisfaction of a response. The man had been provoking him for years now; it was hardly like he wasn’t used to it. 

“I would rather not have a vornskr attack _my_ Force sensitive, either,” Hux declared with a steely glare at Dameron. The possessive pronoun made something warm curl in Ben’s stomach. He shot a grateful look at Hux, who refused to meet his eyes. “So it’s lucky that we’re hiking through the jungle.”

Mara nodded smartly. “After we reach the base, we’ll split into two teams. Finn, Rey, and Poe will go after Palpatine himself. You’re the best team for it because he hasn’t met you before, and Rey has already fought Snoke. Solo, Hux, and I will provide a diversion to prevent the rest of the troops from coming to Palpatine’s rescue.”

“Wait a minute,” Ben said. “You’re not going to let me have a chance at Palpatine?" 

“You’re a giant liability,” Mara told him. “You’ve fallen to the dark side before. Palpatine’s already sent you one dream, and he’s after you to try to convert you to his side. The last place we want you is anywhere near him.”

“I don’t care. I want my chance at him,” Ben said stubbornly. There was a certain logic to her words, but he was still pissed about their first encounter and Palpatine tricking him into thinking Hux was dead.

“Well, I do care, because I think Skywalker would never forgive me if I got his nephew accidentally turned to the dark side again.” Mara was not going to give in, and Ben sighed and gave up. At least this configuration would give him the opportunity to keep an eye on Hux without putting Hux and Palpatine anywhere near one another. “Plus, Rey’s an unknown quantity to him. He has no idea that she even exists. She’s clearly the one for the job.”

Now they were at Myrkr, and it was time to put their plan into action. 

Mara located a convenient clearing about a decent distance away from Palpatine’s base, far enough away that the sensors wouldn’t be able to pick up the ship due to the dampening effect of the vegetation, but close enough that it was easy to hike within a few hours. As they headed in for a landing, they flew over the wide blue ocean, and Rey nearly pulled herself out of her restraints in delight.

“How beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Can we visit it after our mission?” Ben thought back to the multitude of “family vacations” he’d been dragged along on in the last five years, where Rey (accompanied by Finn and Dameron, like always) had spent hours splashing in Chandrila’s beautiful warm oceans, Luke and his mother smiling sadly at them from the beach, while Ben holed himself away in the house they’d rented, avoiding the sun and the affect it had on his pale skin. It was kind of cute that Rey had never lost that enthusiasm about the water.

The ship continued along its trajectory. Despite a bumpy landing due to the bad visibility from the sensors, they all arrived in one piece, and Ben descended the ramp of the ship to be greeted with a blast of familiar hot, humid air.

He was about to start muttering about how much he hated the place when he watched Hux exit the ship and visibly _relax_ , taking in a deep breath of fresh air and looking up into the sky with something that Ben could only describe as relief. It truly hit home in that moment – Hux loved this place. Hux, who had even paler skin than Ben, who probably burnt to a crisp in the sun, and who pretty much despised everyone and everything, for some reason loved this stupid jungle and this stupid continent and this stupid planet. 

Perhaps Myrkr had come to symbolize sanctuary to Hux. No wonder he had been willing to fight a reborn Palpatine in order to protect Skylarville.

Ben began to imagine what it would be like to train Jedi here. The dampening effect by the trees would make them difficult to attack, and the ysalamiri would provide an interesting way of training the more tempestuous of apprentices without complete access to the Force. Maybe he could build an academy on the coast, near a beach, within speeder distance of Skylarville itself…

His train of thought was interrupted by the rest of their group making their way off of the ship. Finn and Dameron checked their weapons and tossed extra power packs for their blasters into their backpacks while Rey hooked her lightsaber on her belt. Mara had three blasters on her that Ben could spot, which meant she probably was actually concealing about six, and she also carried a lightsaber.

She noticed Ben looking at her saber and smiled sharply. “I haven’t used one in years,” she said, “but Skywalker wouldn’t let me come back here without it.”

“Wise,” Ben said. “If we’re up against the Emperor, it helps to have the tools of a Jedi.” It came out sounding more pompous than he’d intended and Hux snorted at his side, but really, of the two of them, who had given a bombastic speech before destroying an entire star system of planets? It had definitely not been Ben. 

“Let’s get going,” Mara told them all.

The hike through the jungle was long and hot. Within five minutes of leaving the ship behind, Ben was already miserable and covered with more sweat than he’d ever wanted to experience in his life. 

“We could have easily stolen or purchased more speeder bikes,” he pointed out for probably the fourth time. It was definitely not the first, considering that nobody even responded to his comment, other than Rey and Hux exchanging looks and rolling their eyes, which—he was definitely not happy about _that_ camaraderie coming out of nowhere. 

Finn and Dameron were scouting ahead, using their experience with guerilla fighting from the Resistance to ensure that their small group didn’t run into any patrols on their way to the base, and Mara was keeping an eye on their back. Perhaps Rey was the only person Hux had to exchange looks with, but it was still a bad alliance.

After another few minutes of walking, Ben couldn’t take the humidity any longer, and he stripped off both his black tunic and the flimsy undershirt he had on underneath. He wiped his forehead with them and tossed them in his pack, deciding to do the rest of the hike shirtless. When he looked back up, Hux had stopped dead. He was staring at Ben, his mouth parted, and after a moment he licked his lips without even seeming to realize it.

Ben grinned and watched Hux look him up and down with wide eyes. Luke’s methods of training Jedi required extensive physical activity, so he’d kept himself in good shape even after abandoning the First Order, but he hadn’t realized his physique would have had such an effect on Hux or he’d have found an excuse to strip his shirt off sooner. 

Rey was eyeing them both skeptically. “Are you sure you want to take your shirt off?” she said, completely disinterested in Ben’s nice body or Hux’s reaction to it. “I know we’re sheltered by vegetation, but you could still end up getting a sunburn without realizing it. Or some of the plants could give you a rash.”

Why was Rey talking about rashes when Ben finally had proof that Hux wanted him as much as he wanted Hux? Family were the _worst_.

A shout came from ahead, and Finn came crashing back through the jungle, making no attempt to stay quiet. He was panting by the time he reached them. “There’s some sort of—“ He gasped for breath. “It’s a creature with a lot of teeth. Poe’s got it distracted but it was headed towards your group when we spotted it.”

Mara did not look happy when she heard this news. “A vornskr?” she guessed. “They aren’t even native to these jungles, and they’re normally nocturnal.” 

“These are those creatures that hunt using the Force? Palpatine might have released them specifically to hunt any Jedi that might come for him,” Ben suggested. He drew his lightsaber and beside him, Rey drew hers too.

“Poe isn’t Force-sensitive, so he shouldn’t be in too much danger,” Mara said. “But we should go take care of it before it comes for us.” She grabbed one of her blasters and took off into the jungle, Ben and Rey following on her heels and Hux bringing up the rear of their party with his own blaster drawn

Finn led them back to where he and Dameron had encountered the vornskr to find Dameron cornered halfway up a tree, shooting at a creature that looked like a hellhound. It sensed the difference in the newcomers and growled, whipping out its tail towards Mara, who dodged it neatly and shot the vornskr between the eyes. It fell dead at her feet.

“I thought those were supposed to be tricky,” Ben said, stowing his lightsaber back on his belt.

“If there’s one, there’s bound to be more of them,” Mara pointed out. “We should be able to detect them early thanks to the fact that Palpatine killed most of the ysalamiri in this area, but keep your senses open for them.”

Ben and Rey nodded, and they set off once more.

In the next ensuing hour of their hike, their party had to dispatch three more vornskrs that had sensed the Jedi through the Force and decided to try to have a nice snack. Mara took care of two of them, but the third jumped right at Ben and slapped him with its tail, which stung and made his arm go slightly numb. Reacting mostly on instinct, he sliced it in half with his lightsaber and left it in a messy pile on the jungle floor.

Hux looked less impressed with his bare chest now that it was streaked with vornskr blood. “Was it really necessary to kill it so messily?” he asked.

“I could have always let it eat me,” Ben muttered, clipping his lightsaber back at his belt again. He met Hux’s gaze and Hux looked away quickly.

Mara stopped them sometime in the next hour of walking and gathered the group back around together. Ben had been following their progress through the Force, and they were just a few minutes out from the ancient temple that Palpatine was using as his base. While they were stopped, Ben took the opportunity to put his shirt back on, not wanting to infiltrate a base looking like a hero from one of the trashy holovids. He thought he could feel Hux’s eyes on him while he was doing so, but when he looked over, Hux was carefully watching Mara with a neutral look on his face.

“We’re almost there,” Mara said. “Let’s go over the plan again quickly, just to make sure that we know what we’re going to do when they start shooting at us.”

“Finn, Poe, and I are going to find Palpatine using the map of the base that you provided us with,” Rey replied promptly. “I’m to take care of him as quickly as possible. If I manage to kill him, you and Ben should feel it through the Force.” 

“Meanwhile,” and Ben still wasn’t happy with this part, but he wasn’t going to mention it now, “Hux, Mara, and I are going to provide a distraction to keep the troops from interfering with Rey’s part of the plan.” He glanced at Mara. “Why do we have two Jedi on distractions and only one against Palpatine?”

“Because two of those three Jedi have a history with the dark side, and only one of them has killed a dark Force user before,” Mara told him bluntly. “I served Palpatine in my youth. I don’t know if I can kill him now.”

Well, at least she was honest. 

“As for you, Skywalker was worried about your mental state if you had to face him, so I’m keeping you far away from him, like we covered before. Plus, this way you can keep an eye on your genocidal sociopath.” Mara definitely did have a way with words, but rather than offended, Hux almost looked smug at the label. 

Rey exchanged glances with Dameron and Finn, and Ben envied them their easy, non-verbal communication. “I think we’re ready,” she told Mara. “I’ll do my best to take care of this clone of Palpatine before he has an opportunity to endanger the galaxy.” 

“That’s my girl,” Mara murmured. In a surprisingly out-of-character move, she wrapped Rey in a hug and placed a kiss on the crown of her head. “I’ve been gone from your life for so long, but I want you to know…I’ve always loved you, Rey.” 

It created an odd mirror image to Ben and his own mother and uncle, and Ben was determined not to let it pull at his heartstrings. In the end, he and Rey were very different people, even if his own actions had caused them both significant amounts of trauma. 

Rey sniffled and pulled away after a long hug. “I’ll make you proud,” she promised.

Ben exchanged a look with Hux, who didn’t avert his eyes this time. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to communicate, and he wasn’t even sure if any of it was getting through, but he wanted Hux to know that he would protect him, and that he wouldn’t let Palpatine trick him into thinking Hux was dead this time. 

Hux’s eyes flickered downward to Ben’s mouth, and Ben felt his cheeks heat up.

Rey cleared her throat. “I think Mara’s ready to leave,” she pointed out, and indeed, Mara was already pushing her way through the underbrush towards the base with Dameron and Finn trailing after her. Hux immediately looked away from Ben and made his way off after them, determinedly pretending that he and Ben hadn’t just had a moment.

As they approached, Ben kept his senses open for null spaces in the Force, not wanting to fall for the same trap as before, but the jungle was mostly clear. When they reached the temple itself, there were only a few guards stationed at one of the entrances.

Mara handed Ben a remote detonator. “Go blow some stuff up,” she ordered as they lurked off to the side, next to one of the massive temple walls.

Ben nodded and snuck around the corner of the temple, using the Force to make sure he wouldn’t run into anyone. He reached a space with some speeders that were completely unattended and grinned – a perfect target. There weren’t even any guards around; although he could sense blank spaces in his periphery, none were close enough to be alarming. He placed the charge on one of the speeders and made his way back to the group with the remote. 

“Are we ready?” he asked. After their group had nodded their assent, Ben pressed the button on the remote. The speeder exploded with immense noise, far more than Ben had been expecting, which probably meant the charge had possibly taken out some of the other speeders as well. The guards by the door jumped to attention and looked around wildly before running off in the direction of the blast, leaving the door unattended. 

“Go!” Rey whispered, taking off around the corner and dashing through the entrance, Dameron and Finn on her heels. Ben was waiting for the sounds of weapons fire from the inside the temple or for more troops to come around looking for the source of the blast, but nothing else happened after Rey’s group disappeared from sight down the dim temple corridor. 

“I don’t like this,” Mara murmured. “It’s too easy.”

“We’re trying to sneak in,” Hux pointed out, strategic mind at work. “But it would seem that someone else wants us to get in without sneaking. Solo, did you see any troops when you set the charge?”

Ben shook his head. “And I can sense some ysalamiri around, but nothing close by.”

Mara pressed her mouth into a firm, unhappy line. “Which means this is a trap.”

“He doesn’t know who Rey is,” Ben pointed out. “She’s an unknown quantity. If it is a trap, it has to be for either you or me. She might still succeed.”

“Or it’s for Luke,” Mara said darkly. “Palpatine’s obsessed.”

Ben hadn’t considered that possibility. He still wasn’t very good at getting his head around the idea that dark side users would be interested in someone other than himself; an artifact of his years at Snoke’s side, no doubt.

After a couple minutes had passed, a series of troops came spilling out of the temple with their weapons drawn, searching for the source of the explosion. They ran in the opposite direction of where Mara, Ben, and Hux were hiding, towards the speeders.

“It might be time to set another charge,” Mara mused. “Putting one here should create enough chaos without threatening the overall structural integrity of the temple.” She took another remote detonator and stuck it on the wall that they were crouched next to. “Come on,” she gestured, and they continued to sneak around in the opposite direction of the speeders until they were far enough away from the charge to blow it.

It exploded with an impressive amount of noise that shook the entire temple. Ben hoped Mara was right about it not threatening the temple’s structure, especially since her daughter and his cousin were inside.

As they hunkered down and waited for something else to happen, he sensed null bubbles in the Force beginning to surround them. By the way that Mara’s hand went to her lightsaber, she sensed them too. He put his hand on Hux’s shoulder. “There are troops coming,” he murmured in his ear. “Be ready.” Again, like the last time Ben had whispered in his ear, Hux shivered before moving away from Ben’s hand.

“I’m ready,” he said, clutching his blaster.

A moment later, the troops struck.

Ben and Mara whipped out their lightsabers, blocking shots from hitting Hux as he fired back with his blaster. The three of them kept their backs to one of the temple walls to prevent being surrounded, and even once the ysalamiri effect had stolen the Force from Ben, he was still able to do a decent job of deflecting shots.

“Aim for the ysalamiri!” Mara ordered Hux over the sound of blasters firing. She glanced at Ben. “Can you deflect most of this fire by yourself?”

Ben wasn’t sure, but he nodded, and Mara turned off her lightsaber and pulled out two blasters instead. As she and Hux began to aim at the ysalamiri on the backs of the troops, Ben felt the Force begin to stir within him once more. It began very muted, but enough that he could deflect blaster fire more effectively, and then it flooded his senses with feeling, as though he had been parched and, all at once, his thirst had been quenched.

With the return of the Force, however, also came something new – a horrible, gnawing premonitory feeling that something wasn’t right.

It was clear Mara felt it too from the sudden change of her facial expression. “Something’s wrong!” Ben shouted to her. 

“Something’s wrong? What do you mean, ‘something’s wrong’?!” Hux demanded, still trying to take down the troops that had them pinned. Some of his hair had gotten loose from his normal gelled-back style and was falling around his face, making him look much more unhinged than usual. Ben liked the look. 

“It’s Rey!” Mara shouted. “Palpatine’s done something to cut her off from the Force. I can’t sense her!” Ben searched his own senses and realized it was true – the annoyingly strong presence that he thought of as ‘Rey’ had disappeared from his periphery. 

“Wonderful,” Hux snapped. “There goes our brilliant plan. Now we’re going to have to face him ourselves.”

Ben didn’t want Hux and Palpatine anywhere near each other. “No,” he said firmly. “ _I’m_ going to have to face him.” He exchanged a glance with Mara, who understood and stowed her blasters back away, igniting her lightsaber. “You two cover me?” he asked.

“You can’t go face him,” Hux insisted. “He almost killed you last time.” But it was far too late for that – Ben was already dodging blaster fire as he ran towards the temple entrance they’d just left, using his lightsaber to deflect the most critical shots. He felt a bolt graze the back of his arm and he winced, but it was nothing more than a surface wound. As he reached the entrance to the temple, it was oddly quiet, with no more soldiers lying in wait, and he extinguished his saber to make himself less visible.

It was definitely a trap.

Luke’s voice echoed in his mind. _If you survive this test, if you are able to resist Palpatine and the call of the dark side once more, you will have become a Jedi Master._ It felt somewhat like his entire life had been leading to this moment, this ultimate challenge to his abilities and his strength as a Jedi. He’d failed this very test once before, back when he’d been too young to even realize how important it was. 

 _I won’t fail you again_ , he thought. _I’m not that boy anymore_. 

The corridors were the same as before and he ran quickly, clutching his lightsaber in hand. Rey was still missing from his senses, but he could feel Palpatine before him, a malevolent darkness that was beginning to infiltrate all of his senses. It was a familiar sort of darkness, the kind that he’d spent fifteen years of his life trying to cultivate in himself and failing.

Maybe it was time for him to save Rey, instead of the other way around. Maybe it was time for Ben Solo to finally be a hero rather than villain or victim.

The sound of blaster fire sounded in front of him, and he ran towards it, finding that the corridor split ahead. Directly in his line of sight was a dead-end hallway with a series of peripheral rooms, and to the right, the corridor continued along the interior of the temple to reach Palpatine’s chamber. In the hallway ahead, a group of soldiers had Dameron and Finn pinned against one of the offices. Finn spotted him and pointed down the corridor to the right.

“Solo! Go find Rey! She’s in trouble! We can handle this!”

Ben surveyed the situation and wasn’t sure if they were telling the truth, but Rey was definitely the more pressing issue right now. He nodded and ducked down the corridor to the right before the troops could react; none of them detached to follow him, probably because they needed all of their forces just to keep Dameron and Finn from breaking free. He heard someone radio ahead about his impending arrival.

Ben reached Palpatine’s ridiculous throne room and stopped at the threshold, surveying the room before he entered. Rey was at one end, held by soldiers twice her size, each with a ysalamir on their back.  On the other side of the throne room, out of the range of the ysalamiri effect, Palpatine spotted Ben and grinned. 

“Welcome, Ben Solo,” he said with open arms. “I see that you’ve finally realized it’s your destiny to serve by my side, just like your grandfather.”

Ben glared at him. “I already tried to follow my grandfather’s path, and all it got me was heartbreak and despair. I’m not Anakin Skywalker, and I never will be.” The words hurt, like they always did when Ben faced that fact.

Palpatine looked a little taken aback. He rose from his throne-like chair and walked down the stairs that raised it above the floor level, surveying Ben as he moved. Ben ignited his lightsaber and met his eyes, trying to sharpen his gaze.

“Ben, be careful!” Rey shouted from the other side of the room.

“I don’t know why you bothered to send me this woman,” Palpatine said condescendingly. “She was unable to do anything to stop me, and she was remarkably easy to manipulate into the ysalamiri’s force field. Almost as easy and pathetic as you were.” He smirked.

Did Palpatine realize Rey’s parentage? He hadn’t known Ben’s until he’d given him the name ‘Kylo Ren’, which meant he was caught up on galactic gossip but didn’t know how to match names to faces. Did he think Rey was just another Jedi? 

Would it endanger her or distract Palpatine to learn who her parents were? There was no time like the present to find out.

“It’s funny that you think that she’s pathetic,” Ben said conversationally, not letting Palpatine herd him into the ysalamiri bubble, “because her father certainly did a number on you. If I were you, I wouldn’t underestimate another Skywalker.” The clone stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at Rey, who was struggling with her captors and trying to get free to no avail.

“She’s the daughter of Luke Skywalker?” he asked, his voice almost…hungry.

Ben had him. “Yes, and I believe you’re acquainted with her mother as well. I think she used to work for you? Mara Jade?”

Palpatine’s rage rose so quickly and exploded so furiously through the Force that Ben wasn’t expecting it. The force of his fury hurtled through Ben’s mind and caused him to drop his lightsaber and fall to his knees, clutching his head in pain. Rey was spared the onslaught thanks to the ysalamiri, but she yelled in alarm when she saw Ben fall. 

Palpatine walked past Ben, kicking his falling lightsaber out of the way so that it clattered to a far end of the room. He continued until he stood as close to Rey as he could without putting himself in the Forceless bubble. “You are the child of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade? No wonder you are intensely strong with the Force.” He gestured at Ben. “Forget this weakling. You should be the one to take your grandfather’s rightful place as my second in command, as my heir. Your mother served me well.”

“And my father helped destroy you!” Rey snapped back, her eyes feral. “Don’t think I don’t know my history!” Her gaze turned to Ben. “Where are Poe and Finn?” she demanded of him. 

“They’re safe,” Ben assured her dryly. “Probably better than me, at the moment.” His head still throbbed from the onslaught of Palpatine’s mental power.

“You’re a lot like your father,” Palpatine mused, beginning to pace. “Always concerned with others and never yourself. But didn’t your father abandon you, years ago? I seem to recall a rumor of some sort.”

Ben’s brain was starting to come online more fully. He could see his lightsaber, discarded in the corner, and tried to move it with his mind, but he was still too weak from Palpatine’s unintentional attack. If he hadn’t even meant to hurt Ben in that explosion of fury, what would it be like when Palpatine actually tried to kill him?

As if sensing the direction of Ben’s thoughts, Palpatine turned to look at him and grinned. “I feel your fear, Ben Solo,” he purred. “Let it flow freely through you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Ben muttered to himself, even though he was terrified. “I’m a Jedi. There is no fear, there is only the Force.” The mantra felt empty in that moment, filled with the possibility that he could die at any time. He was afraid, but he was also filled with certainty – the dark side didn’t fit within him, not the way everyone always wanted it to. Palpatine would be ill-served if Ben were to be his apprentice.

It was as though that thought released a deluge. Palpatine turned and attacked his mind with the Force, telepathically throwing negative energy and thoughts at him to the point where it was overwhelming. _You’re a failure,_ he said in Ben’s mind, _you’ve always been a failure at everything. You were a mediocre Knight of Ren, and now you’re a mediocre Jedi. You’ve never done anything that anyone who loves you could be proud of. Nobody even loves you. Is that even shocking, given your history, what you’ve done to the people who care about you? You destroy everything you trust. You’ll even kill your lover in the end._

Ben knew these things weren’t true, but in some ways they were, weren’t they? The mental mind games did the opposite that Palpatine had hoped, however; it reminded Ben of everything he’d already lost to the dark side, of how Snoke’s manipulations had driven him straight to ruin and despair.

Ben Solo was not very strong-minded. He was not noble or a hero. He wasn’t the strongest of the Jedi, nor was he the best at using the Force. He hadn’t even inherited the good looks that ran through most of his family members, something that irritated him at times.

But if there was one thing Ben Solo had learned, it was that the dark side hadn’t solved any of these problems. It had not made him stronger, or more talented with his Force techniques. It had not made him handsome or noble or proud. It had not turned him into a hero. It hadn’t even helped him keep his mind strong. All it had done was destroy him, force him to kill his father, and turned him into a war criminal who made his mother cry.

“I’m never going back!” Ben yelled. If there was ever a time for his Skywalker sense of drama to come out, that was it. “You’ll have to kill me first!”

Palpatine regarded him calmly. “So be it,” he said, apparently willing to meet Ben dramatic line for dramatic line. He turned and gave Rey a shark-like grin, with way too many teeth. “Are you ready to watch your cousin die in front of you, young Skywalker? If you find the power of the dark side within yourself, I wouldn’t have to kill him.”

“Please,” scoffed Rey. “You’d probably make _me_ kill him.”

Palpatine laughed, a truly gruesome sound. “I did give you the chance,” he told her. “Don’t forget that, later.” Without further pageantry, he turned and unceremoniously shot blue Force lightning directly at Ben. 

Ben had caught and deflected Force lightning before, but not with Palpatine running through his head, not with Palpatine also pulling thoughts from his mind before he could even formulate them. He couldn’t even pull himself together enough to yank his own lightsaber from across the room; there was no way he could deflect Force lightning this time around. It shot through his body and he screamed in pain, writhing on the ground. He could vaguely hear Rey yelling in the background. It felt like his entire body was alight.

He was going to die. He had to—

He reached out in the Force with his fragmented mind, desperately seeking the one bright presence that was so hard to hide from him. Hux was there, still setting charges with Mara outside the temple.

 _Hux_ , he thought, and from the startled reaction that Hux gave in response, he knew that he’d heard him. _Hux, I’m sorry. I think he’s going to kill me._ Hux was too far away for Ben to receive a response, but he could feel Hux’s alarm, and the way his brilliant military mind went into strategizing mode. _Get out of here. Go someplace safe. Don’t forget me._  

Palpatine hit him with another burst of Force lightning, and Ben was torn from his connection with Hux, shouting loudly in pain. He grabbed his head, trying to get the Force back, but it was too much.

The lightning continued for so long that Ben lost track of time. His head swam. Was this what dying felt like, he wondered? He’d tried to tell Hux how he’d felt and he thought the message had gotten through. Hopefully Hux and Mara would get as far from there as possible. No one could defeat Palpatine, nobody except maybe Luke. History was doomed to repeat itself, over and over, and no one could escape from it. 

Then, the lightning stopped. Ben blinked blearily from his place on the stone floor, pressing his cheek against the cool stone to get some relief from the burns the lightning had caused. When Mara entered the throne room, he turned his head so he could watch her, noting disinterestedly that Finn and Poe had appeared behind her, flanking her with blasters drawn.

“Let my daughter go,” she ordered, “and I’ll join you.”

With Palpatine distracted, Ben tried to reach his lightsaber again, but it didn’t even budge. His head was still swimming, and he wasn’t even sure if he was hallucinating or not. He was too gravely injured to work the Force properly, and he could no longer sense Hux at all. _Hux_ , he projected into the Force nearby. Did that mean Hux was dead? Was he just obscured by ysalamiri again?

Mara and Palpatine were talking. “I’ve grown stronger, since I served my original master,” she was saying to him, spinning items around her head as though they weighed nothing at all. Ben noted in a curious sort of way that one of the items she’d drawn to herself was his own lightsaber, and he wished she’d send it to him so that he could use it, to—

And there his plan stopped, because he could barely move. How could he use a lightsaber?

Ben groaned and lay his cheek against the cool stone floor once more. Mara and Palpatine were hammering out the beginnings of a deal – Rey would go free, Mara would join him, they would rule the galaxy, they’d try to recruit Rey at a later date. It seemed obvious to Ben that Mara was trying to stall Palpatine until she could find a way to free Rey, but the clone didn’t actually seem all that bright, and he wasn’t picking up on it. Ben wondered if something about the cloning process killed brain cells, since the original Palpatine had been rumored to have been a genius. 

Someone landed beside him, and the Force disappeared all at once. Ben struggled to see at a better angle, but he knew those boots, similar to First Order issue but slightly more scuffed and smuggler-like.

It was Hux.

Hux, who was wearing a ysalamir on a nutrient frame on his back. Hux, who walked straight up to Palpatine, who was staring at him in surprise, the Force robbed from him as well. 

Hux grinned at him, a feral grin that Ben hadn’t seen since the First Order. There was pure, cold fury in his eyes even as he smiled and pointed his blaster straight at Palpatine’s forehead.

“Don’t fuck with my Jedi,” he said, and shot Palpatine between the eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one part left to go! Thank you all for reading, and please follow me on my new fandom [tumblr](http://saucy-kate.tumblr.com/).


	6. Chapter 6

The chaos following Palpatine’s death was incredible. The guards holding Rey sprung into action. Mara shot the ysalamiri they carried, and the moment Rey had the Force back, she grabbed Ben’s lightsaber and began to fight as well. With Palpatine dead, however, it took very little effort to subdue the rest of the guards, who didn’t seem to have any sort of drive or plan with their leader dead. Ben thankfully succumbed to unconsciousness before the battle was even over.

He awoke in a bacta tank and blinked a few times, trying to figure out where he was. If he was submerged in bacta, he must have survived the battle with Palpatine, but who had taken him out? Was bacta really necessary for his burns? He hated the stuff, especially the way it stuck between his toes.

Squinting through the liquid, he could see vague human forms outside the tank. One of them resolved into Hux, who was pacing nervously in front of his tank. Ben smiled to himself. He had one crystal clear memory of the battle with Palpatine – Hux calling him “my Jedi”.

A few minutes awake was enough to exhaust him, and hanging around in bacta wasn’t exactly stimulating, so he soon fell back asleep and didn’t wake again until he was out of the tank and laid out on a cot. His arm was bandaged where it’d been grazed by the blaster bolt, his hair was pulled back away from his face with a tie, and he was wearing simple white linen clothes, possibly from a hospital. The first thing he noticed other than his own state was Hux, who was sleeping next to him in a very uncomfortable-looking chair.

“Hux,” he croaked, his throat dry from the bacta. “Hux, at least get in bed with me.”

Hux blinked awake, and their eyes met. “You’re awake,” he murmured, still soft from sleep. 

Speaking was too much effort, so Ben switched to the Force. _You look so uncomfortable slouched in that chair,_ he projected to Hux, along with an image of Hux curled up next to Ben on the small hospital bed, with Ben’s arms around him. 

To Ben’s delight, color rose in Hux’s cheeks. “As tempting as that is, I can’t join you,” he replied dryly. “Your skin is still healing from the burns that Palpatine gave you. The bacta did most of the work, but you need a few more hours before you can be touched.”  
  
Rey appeared in the doorway a moment later, breathless. “I sensed you were awake!” she exclaimed, scampering to the side of his bed. “You both saved my life,” she added.

“Your mom would have done that if we hadn’t,” Hux said reasonably, his tone suggesting that he’d had this conversation several times before.

“My dad and Aunt Leia are officially issuing a pardon for Hux,” she told Ben. “On account of the fact that he took out Palpatine and saved the lives of several Jedi in the process. A lot of people in the Republic are pretty unhappy about it.”

“I’m still not living in your precious Republic,” Hux sneered. “They’ll get over it.”

“Also, Hux hasn’t left you alone since we pulled you from the temple,” Rey added with a vindictive glance at Hux. “He won’t even leave to sleep.” Which Ben had sort of worked out for himself, considering the uncomfortable chair-sleeping, but it was still gratifying to hear it from someone else. Something warm blossomed in his chest, and he realized that it was _hope_. 

Hux looked embarrassed and there was still color in his cheeks. “I…someone had to keep an eye on him,” he said gruffly.

Ben’s eyelids began to feel heavy, and he realized he was again starting to fall asleep, right as Hux and Rey began to tease each other – what a strange dynamic, he thought as he drifted off.

The third time he woke, Hux was curled up in bed with him.  
  
He was still skinny, even with his extra musculature from being more active. Ben turned around and wrapped both of his long arms around Hux’s torso, stroking along his arm. Hux made a small noise and stirred, and when his eyes opened and met Ben’s, Ben realized suddenly how close their faces were to one another.

“You’re healed enough for touching,” Hux said sleepily.

“I assumed so,” Ben replied. His voice was back, thankfully. He leaned over and rested his head on Hux’s, feeling his soft hair against his cheek. “You killed him. For me.” 

Their breathing was the only sound in the room for a moment. “I did,” Hux replied at last. “He was going to kill you.”

“Why would that matter to you?” Ben asked petulantly; he was tired of Hux running hot and cold all the time. “Half of the time, you act like you don’t even care about me.”

Hux rolled his eyes. “You giant idiot. Of course I care about you.”

“Then why are you always pulling away?” Ben asked. Hux sighed heavily and stared up at the ceiling, hesitant to meet Ben’s gaze.

“I thought you were just going to leave, when this was all over. I assumed you were going to hop in your ship and go back to your Jedi temple and your family and forget that I existed.” He sighed and ran his fingers drowsily through Ben’s hair.

“What changed your mind?” Ben asked, curious.

Hux tucked some of Ben’s hair behind his ear. “You projected to me while you were being tortured by Palpatine, a lot more than just words. I got images and impressions too. One of them was your little idea of staying here and training Jedi. With me.” He gave Ben a look that could almost have been called fond. It was sometimes hard to believe that this was the same man who had once had blistering arguments with him in the hallways of the Finalizer, several lifetimes before. “I realized that, for some reason, you really care about me. I never knew it was as real for you as it was for me.” 

“It’s been real for me since the moment I stepped onto the Finalizer years ago,” Ben said with absolute honesty, pulling Hux closer and pressing a kiss to his ear. Hux squirmed away from the affection, and Ben realized with absolute joy how much fun this was going to be. He was going to be able to irritate Hux _forever_.

He must have projected that last thought, because Hux pushed him away and glared. “No,” he said, pointing at Ben with one long finger. “You are not going to irritate me forever. I order you not to.” 

“Since when have I ever obeyed your orders?” Ben laughed, rolling Hux over so that he could kiss him, once, gently, and then again, more passionately. After they split apart, he licked his lips. “When am I allowed to leave this hospital?” 

“You’re discharged in the morning. Mara made sure that your ship was taken out of impound and all of our things that we left in the last hotel room were returned to it as well. The moment that Palpatine died, the troops who were manning the city ran to ground, probably thanks to the rumor that there were Jedi here cleaning up. Skylarville seems to have gone back to normal in just a few days.”

Ben was glad to hear it and he knew Hux would feel better knowing his city was safe. 

Hux began to speak again, and then stopped, unsure. He swallowed and started again. “Once you’re discharged…I’ve booked another room at the hotel. I mean, you’re welcome to return to your ship, but if you want to stay with me…"

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ben said. “Of course I’ll stay with you. I’m staying with you forever.”

Hux raised an eyebrow. “Force help us all,” he muttered, and Ben couldn’t help himself. He kissed him again, soundly, and Hux kissed him back.

* * *

The moment the door of the hotel room was closed behind them, Ben grabbed Hux’s face between his palms and pressed him up against the door, kissing him deeply. Hux immediately kissed him back and reached up and tangled a hand in Ben’s thick hair, tugging slightly, his other hand curling around Ben’s hip to snake up under his loosened shirt. They made out frantically for a few moments, reassuring each other that they were both still alive. Hux’s mouth was warm against his, and Ben wondered if it was possible to become addicted just to something as simple as kissing another person. 

He tried to get himself to slow their pace, to make this good for both of them. He pulled his tongue from Hux’s mouth and sucked at Hux’s lower lip in apology, drawing away from him. The noise Hux made at that banished all thoughts of going slow from Ben’s mind, and he pulled Hux away from the door and continued to kiss him deeply as they walked haphazardly towards the bed. Finally, the back of Ben’s knees hit side of the mattress and he stopped, pulling away from Hux regretfully. 

Hux’s entire face and the back of his neck were flushed red, his eyes bright and his lips shiny and swollen. Ben couldn’t handle how debauched he looked, how perfect he was, how wonderful it was that he’d admitted what they’d both known for awhile. He cupped Hux’s cheek with one large palm, leaning in to briefly brush their mouths together once more. 

“I don’t know how the Force works,” Hux murmured against his lips, “but I can feel how excited you are from here. You’re projecting everything.” Hux also clearly projected his own observation that Ben had never really had any sense of calm. Before Ben could really react to that thought, Hux pushed him down onto the bed with more strength than Ben had been expecting.

Ben went willingly, wrapping his arms around Hux and pulling him down on top of him to straddle his waist. He pressed his mouth back against Hux’s and brought their hips together, which made Hux give a choked-off moan that shook Ben to his core. He did it again, pulling away from kissing him to observe the way that Hux watched him steadily, eyes half-mast, mouth open and breathing hard. Ben couldn’t help himself and slid a finger between Hux’s parted lips. The vision he presented was obscene, and nobody’s clothing had even come off yet.

“Hux, you are just—“ Ben began, but Hux reached up and began to yank his own shirt over his head, and Ben had to stop speaking to help him. Hux’s shirt and vest landed on the floor and Ben’s shirt soon joined them, and then they were kissing again, wildly, desperately glad to have come to a place where they could take off their masks and admit to each other what they’d always wanted. It had been a long time coming – Ben had wanted Hux from the moment that he’d been greeted by a younger-than-he-expected General on board the Finalizer, the light from the landing bay glinting off of his perfectly combed red hair. The fact that it had taken him months to even see Hux smile and that Hux had seemed to despise him hadn’t deterred his lust in the least.

He’d spent months on board the Finalizer just wanting to take General Hux apart, hiding behind his mask, and once that mask had come off, he’d startlingly realized that Hux wanted him just as much. In those months after the destruction of Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren had gotten into fight after fight with Hux because he was too frightened to act on it, channeling his frustration into their rivalry instead. They exchanged insults and tried to one-up each other over and over again, until Kylo was sure that at any moment, one of them was going to snap and brutally shove the other up against the wall so that they could rut against one another.

It had never happened. Hux had disappeared in the chaos of Snoke’s defeat. Kylo Ren had been transformed back into Ben Solo. Now, years later, they weren’t Kylo Ren and General Hux any longer, but Ben Solo and Brendol Hux had turned that mixture of rivalry and lust into something that matched their new identities.

Hux clearly wasn’t liking the fact that Ben was ruminating in the middle of their activities, and he brought Ben back to himself with a quick nip on his collarbone. “Stop daydreaming. Am I boring you?”

“Never,” Ben breathed, leaning up to press open-mouthed kisses behind Hux’s ear, down the line of his throat. “I was just thinking about how many times I wanted to push you into an unused conference room and just _debauch_ you on the Finalizer.” To his delight, Hux’s flush grew even deeper, running down his chest, and he licked his lips as he focused his eyes on Ben’s mouth.

“If I hadn’t debauched you first,” he threatened. “Especially after the destruction of Starkiller. I was a mess of restless energy and you were always there, always fighting me at every turn.” He laughed. “My droid did a lot of laundry because of you, Solo.”

“You should call me Ben.”

Ben pulled forward so that he could run his tongue along the lines of Hux’s collarbone before moving down to press his mouth against one of Hux’s nipples, sucking gently. He hadn’t had a life that had led him to much sexual experience, but it didn’t seem to matter; this was Hux, and that was all that was important, especially when Hux threw his head back again and murmured, like benediction, “ _Ben_.”

It was too much. Ben pulled himself back up so that he could kiss Hux deeply, reaching for the clasps on Hux’s pants and his own and freeing them both from the rest of their clothing, tossing everything on the floor. He didn’t have the patience or time to try to find some lotion or oil, so instead he spat into his palm and took them both in one of his large hands. At the first touch, Hux broke their kiss to stare up at the ceiling with wide eyes, breathing heavily, clearly as touch-starved as Ben himself had been. They’d spent a lot of years of their lives messed up and alone. He was going to make sure that neither of them had to deal with that again.

What with how long it had clearly been for both of them and the intense Force feedback-loop that was developing between them as their pleasure built, it didn’t take long before Hux arched his back, pulling Ben in towards him and kissing him sloppily through his orgasm. His pleasure fed back into Ben’s mind through the Force, lighting up all of his neurons and sending him tumbling over the edge as well, murmuring Hux’s name against his lips.

They laid together in silence for a long moment, just listening to each other breathe.

“In all the universes, in all the possibilities,” Hux murmured, breaking the spell. “I had never imagined I would ever find you again.” It was probably the most sentimental thing that Ben had ever heard him say.

Ben smoothed his hair and pressed his mouth to Hux’s temple. It felt odd, showing affection to someone so prickly, but Hux was post-coital and complacent and didn’t fight him. “You did, though,” he replied. “You did.”

After cleaning up and a brief bout of sleep, tangled together in a warm pile in the middle of the bed, Ben found both himself and Hux stirring awake once more. He couldn’t keep his hands off of him – lazy, sleepy kisses turned into a second round of sex, far more languid than the first, where they actually took the time to explore one another. Ben wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt so fantastic in his entire life as he had with Hux beneath him, pressing messy kisses against the side of his neck in just the right place.

More sleeping followed, and the next time Ben awoke, bright morning light was streaming in the windows of their hotel room, illuminating the bed and its occupants. Hux’s hair was reflecting the light rather well, and Ben found himself running his fingers through the bright strands, smiling to himself. Was this what it was like, to suddenly have something to live for?

Hux awoke slowly and grouchily and batted his hand away. “Stop that,” he muttered, pushing his face into the pillow.

“I’m an affectionate person,” Ben told him, pressing a kiss against the back of his neck. “I’m not going to apologize for it.”

“You’re _needy_ is what you are,” Hux mumbled, but Ben could read through the Force that he was only putting up a token resistance and actually enjoyed the attention. They drowsed lazily together for a few minutes, with Ben’s arm wrapped around Hux and one hand stroking down the line of his spine.

Finally, Hux rolled back over and fixed Ben with a green stare, looking far more awake. The words that came out of his mouth were the last thing Ben had been expecting.

“Today, let’s find a location for your Jedi school.”

* * *

_Six Months Later…_

It was a humid, clear day in Myrkr’s equatorial region when Ben’s first apprentice arrived.

Ben had spent all day fussing over the rooms in the training annex that he’d built when they’d constructed their little house on the beach, making sure everything was in order while Hux went into town, not wanting to deal with his nerves. Everything had to be perfect for his first student, and Hux was usually more of a perfectionist than Ben was, so he could just deal with it.

By the time the shuttle from Chandrila came in for a landing on their private beach, Hux had returned from Skylarville and was in a far more patient mood than when he’d left.

“Skywalker’s sending you his difficult students,” he reasoned as Ben rocked back and forth on his heels, nervous. “She’s not going to like you anyway. And she’s a teenager, they’re all horrid.”

“It doesn’t matter if she’s horrible, she’s my first student! She has expectations!” Hux had known what he was getting into with regards to Ben’s histrionics before he’d agreed to this partnership; Ben was hardly going to feel bad about it. 

The small shuttle landed on the beach and a moment afterwards, the ramp extended. Rey exited first, and a huge grin lit her face up when she saw Ben. It turned out, all he’d really needed to do to redeem himself with his family was to defeat another Emperor and then live as far away from all of them as possible.

Rey ran in for a quick hug. Then she looked back at the shuttle and rolled her eyes. “Kalla, come out here, will you?”

An exasperated “I’m _coming_ ,” echoed out of the shuttle, and Ben and Hux exchanged glances.

“Kalla’s…in a difficult phase, is what Luke keeps saying,” Rey told them. “She’s had a rough childhood. Her parents were killed in an attack on a colony world by the Imperial Remnant when she was still really young, and then she fell in with street kids for awhile on the lower levels of Coruscant. There’s a lot of anger there. Just…be patient with her, okay?”

A teenaged Twi’lek girl with blue skin and a furious expression came down the ramp, using the Force to float a bag possibly bigger than herself along behind her. Briefly brushing her mind, Ben could feel a roiling of unhealed trauma, fury, and loss, all easy paths to the dark side. But there was also an incredible potential for something else as well. 

Whoever said it would be easy to be a Jedi Master?

“This is Jedi Master Solo,” Rey told Kalla, who’d made her way over to them and had lost some of her furious expression upon seeing the ocean.

“You live _here_?” she asked incredulously. Rey raised an eyebrow and she quickly added, “oh, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Kalla.”

Ben smiled. “We live here, and now you do as well. Welcome to Myrkr.” Did he know what he was doing? Could he ever be a Jedi Master like Luke, or was he just a fraud? The words came to him, all at once. “I know Master Skywalker has told you there’s a darkness within you that you have to beware of. I’m here to teach you how to use that darkness to harness your own light. There’s nothing wrong with shadows.”

Kalla stared at him, her mouth open, her mind broadcasting surprise and wonder. Maybe he wouldn’t be so bad at this Jedi Master job after all. 

“Let me show you to the rooms we’ve prepared for you,” Ben said. “This is Hux, my...partner?” He and Hux had never settled on a term for what they were, but Hux nodded in agreement. 

“Hux can take your bag,” Ben added. 

Kalla laughed. “Nobody without the Force can take this bag,” she said, proud. “Everything I own is in it, and it’s heavier than you are.” She continued to float it along behind her as Ben showed her to her rooms. She was definitely going to be trouble, but Ben was looking forward to the challenge.

Later, after Kalla was settled in and Rey had left to go visit Mara in Skylarville, Ben sank down into one of the chairs on their porch and stared out at the ocean, his mind a loud, tangled mess. Hux was already out there in the other chair, nursing a glass of Corellian brandy.

“If you’d have told me ten years ago that I’d be here, teaching Jedi to resist the dark side, I’d have laughed at you,” Ben said.

“If you’d have told me ten years ago that we’d be here, together, running some sort of Jedi school, _I’d_ have thrown myself out of an airlock,” Hux replied sardonically, taking another sip from his glass. “And yet, here we are." 

It wasn’t going to be easy. The darkness in Kalla was already gaining hold, and Ben was going to have to work very carefully with her to prevent it from taking over. There would eventually be other students, other angry, unhappy teenagers, maybe even others like Ben himself, who had fallen and come back. The possibility than any one of those students could fall to the dark side was high, and yet, for the first time in his life, Ben felt alive.

Ben himself was always going to dream about his crimes, about Hosnian Prime and killing his father, and Hux was always going to be kind of a self-centered sociopath. In the end, though, maybe redemption hadn’t meant forgiveness and returning to how everything had been after all. Maybe instead, it meant living every day understanding the consequences of his actions, and working for the rest of his life to prevent such things from happening again.

Ben smiled as Hux offered him a glass of brandy and accepted, their fingers brushing.

He could live with that.

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading this story! You have all been so wonderful and encouraging, and I am so appreciative of all of your lovely comments, kudos, and bookmarks. This is the end of this saga for now, although I have a couple of smaller one-shot sequels that I might write in this same universe, and who really knows what the future will hold? We'll really have to see what my inspiration wants me to write.
> 
> You are always welcome to add me on [tumblr](http://saucy-kate.tumblr.com/)! I love to talk about this fandom and I'm pretty friendly, so please come by and say hi! I also want to try to write more in this pairing, so anyone who wants to encourage that would be very very welcome.
> 
> It's been a pleasure!


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